ROGER    DRAKE 


"  '  IF  I    EVER   GET  YOU  UNDER   MY   FEET,   AND  I   MEAN  TO  SOME   DAY,   I 
SHALL  TRAMP   HARD.'  " 


ROGER    DRAKE 


CAPTAIN     OF    INDUSTRY 


BY 


HENRY   KITCHELL  WEBSTER 

AUTHOR  OF   "THE   BANKER   AND  THE    BEAR,"   JOINT  AUTHOR 
OF    "  CALUMET  '  K,'  "  ETC. 


THE   MACMILLAN   COMPANY 

LONDON :  MACMILLAN  AND  CO.,  LTD. 
1902 

All  rigktt  rturvtd 


COPYRIGHT,  1902, 
BY  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 


Set  up  and  clectrotyped  October,  1902.      Reprinted  December, 
1902. 


NortoonB  tyrna 

J.  8.  Gushing  &  Co  —  Berwick  fc  Smith 
Norwood  Mass.  U.S.A. 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

" « If  I  ever  get  you  under  my  feet,  and  I  mean  to 

some  day,  I  shall  tramp  hard '"      .          .   Frontispiece 

FACING  PAGE 

" I  took  a  good  look  at  him  "         .          .          .          .        16 

Fletcher !  .          .          .          .          .          .          .          .34 

"  All  I  could  say  was,  ' Adele  !  Adele  !  Adele  ! '"  .  66 
"I  saw  my  old  Viking  to-day  down  the  street"  .  86 
"  We  had  made  our  strike  at  last"  .  .  .96 

"  I  thought  it  best  not  to  speak  to  him  "  .          .104 

"  He  learned  enough  to  talk  about  it  convincingly  "  .  136 
"  '  This  is  my  daughter  and  your  nurse '  '  .  .150 
"He  smoked  two  or  three  pipes  over  it"  .  .  154 
" 'It's  too  late,  Drake' "  .....  194 

The  Board  Meeting 210 

"  He  looked  at  me  suspiciously  "  ....  242 
"  '  What  the  devil  do  you  want  of  me  ?  '  "  .  .  264 
"'Shall  we  burn  it  ?'  I  asked  "  .  .  .  .  270 
"  <  I'm  so  glad  for  her,'  was  all  she  said  "  .  .  296 
"  He  said  just  what  he  had  said  before,  '  It's  too  late 

for  that,  Drake '"         .          .          .          .          .      304 


n 


ROGER   DRAKE 

CHAPTER   I 

I  ROGER  DRAKE,  will  tell  my  story 
,  myself.  I  have  just  been  hearing  the  talk 
go  round  over  a  man  not  yet  three  hours  dead ; 
have  heard  people  telling  his  story  for  him. 
They  say  he  had  no  friend  but  the  next  hun- 
dred thousand  he  meant  to  make ;  that  whether 
the  means  were  crooked  or  straight  made  no 
difference  to  him ;  that  he  as  often  cheated 
those  who  thought  he  was  a  friend  as  those 
who  knew  him  for  an  enemy ;  that  he  com- 
pelled his  employees  to  lie  and  steal  for  him. 
Not  even  his  good  works  —  and  as  the  world 
counts  them  they  were  many  —  escaped  a  sneer 
from  those  who  knew  the  gossip  about  him. 
And  I,  who  knew  him  slightly,  cannot  say  or 
think  they  did  him  one  injustice. 

My  life,  like  his,  has  been  one  long  struggle 
for  commercial  supremacy ;  like  him,  I  have 
succeeded  in  getting  it.  Among  other  things 


Roger  Drake 

I  shall  tell  here  of  the  steps  which  led  to  that 
success,  and  how,  beginning  at  nothing,  my 
fortune  has  grown  so  large  that  it  is  no  longer 
mine,  but  a  public  affair  —  a  public  menace, 
some  say. 

And  some  time,  before  long  perhaps,  the 
same  knot  of  men  I  sat  among  to-night  will 
talk  about  me,  and  much  as  they  did  of  him. 
They  will  say  that  I  quarrelled  with  my  best 
friend  and  made  war  on  him,  and  finally,  after 
years,  ruined  him,  and  that  is  true,  though  not 
the  whole  truth.  They  may  also  say  that  I 
bought  men's  consciences ;  that  I  lied  to  men 
and  cheated  those  who  had  put  themselves  in 
my  hands ;  and  those  things,  I  thank  God,  are 
not  true.  But  I  will  tell  my  own  story. 

It  begins  with  the  morning  of  my  twentieth 
birthday,  when  I  left  the  train  I  had  been  riding 
in,  at  Jones's  Siding,  with  a  store  of  inaccurate 
information  and  some  half-baked  ideas,  which 
I  called  an  education,  a  good  suit  of  clothes,  a 
few  little  decencies  and  luxuries  in  a  hand-bag, 
six  or  eight  dollars,  and  a  determination  to  dis- 
cover a  gold  mine.  I  knew  that  there  was  a 
new  gold  town  not  far  away ;  that  men  were 
going  out  there  from  civilization;  and  that 
some  few  were  already  coming  back  rich.  I 
had  no  experience  with  men  or  things ;  no 


Roger   Drake 

knowledge,  even  theoretical,  of  mining,  and  I 
hadn't  a  friend  in  the  world. 

I  walked  up  the  platform,  passed  some  men 
who  had  also  got  off  the  train  and  were  busy 
with  their  baggage,  —  I  hadn't  any,  —  and  came 
upon  a  fellow  with  a  buckboard  and  a  team  of 
mules.  I  started  to  tell  him  where  I  wanted 
to  go,  but  he  interrupted  me. 

"  Oh,  I  know  about  that,"  he  said.  "There's 
only  one  place  where  you  can  go." 

I  asked  him  how  much  he  would  charge  to 
take  me  there,  and  he  answered  briskly  —  a 
little  too  briskly,  if  I  hadn't  been  so  green  — 
that  it  would  be  five  dollars.  I  figured  that 
there  was  no  help  for  it,  so  I  paid  him  and 
climbed  into  the  front  seat.  He  asked  me  to 
hold  the  mules,  and  went  away,  to  return 
presently  with  my  fellow-passengers.  They 
were  all  laughing.  Two  or  three  times,  as  we 
were  on  the  way,  I  was  aware  that  the  driver 
turned  and  winked  at  them,  and  an  explosion 
of  laughter  always  followed.  I  knew,  of 
course,  that  it  was  over  me,  and  I  suspected 
the  reason. 

The  driver  talked  nearly  all  the  while,  and 
asked  scores  of  questions  of  all  of  us.  Between 
him  and  the  others  there  seemed  already  estab- 
lished a  kind  of  fellowship  that  made  me  all 

3 


Roger   Drake 

the  lonelier.  They  seemed  to  be  miners,  gold- 
hunters,  like  myself,  but  they  had  seen  many 
lands  and  many  kinds  of  men.  They  talked 
to  the  driver  in  a  technical  jargon,  which  to  my 
ears  might  as  well  have  been  Zulu.  When 
the  driver  talked  to  me  he  seemed  more  to  be 
drawing  me  out  for  the  amusement  of  the 
others  than  anything  else,  so  I  was  as  short 
with  him  as  possible.  The  truth  was,  these 
men  on  the  back  seats  had  set  me  to  thinking, 
for  the  first  time  in  my  life,  I  guess.  Here 
were  gold-hunters  who  had  everything  I  lacked, 
strength,  experience  in  the  world,  knowledge 
of  their  craft, —  I  hadn't  known  before  that  it 
was  a  craft,  —  and  they  had  been  on  this  quest 
many  years,  by  their  talk,  but  it  seemed  they 
had  not  yet  succeeded.  When  I  reflected  on 
what  my  chance  of  success  was,  compared  with 
theirs,  and  what  my  prospect  in  life  was  if  I 
failed,  I  came  nearer  to  losing  my  nerve  than 
I  ever  have  since. 

We  reached  the  town  at  last,  and  before  one 
of  the  first  of  the  houses,  which  bore  the  mod- 
est sign  "  Gentlemen's  Boarding  House,"  our 
driver  pulled  up.  "This  is  your  place,"  he 
said  to  the  others,  and  they  clambered  out. 
As  we  drove  off  they  called,  "  So  long,"  to  the 
driver,  and  nodded,  not  unfriendly,  at  me, 

4 


Roger   Drake 

"  I  suppose  you  wanted  to  go  to  the  hotel  ? " 
he  asked. 

"  I  don't  want  to  go  anywhere,"  said  I. 
"  I'd  like  to  leave  this  bag  where  it  won't  be 
jstolen,  and  then  I'll  shift  for  myself." 

"  Nobody'll  steal  your  bag,"  he  said  in  a 
tone  I  didn't  understand.  I  know  now  how 
angry  that  remark  must  have  made  him.  But 
a  moment  later  he  said :  "  You'll  have  to  go 
somewhere.  You  can't  get  out  of  town  till 
to-morrow  morning." 

"  I  don't  mean  to  get  out  of  town,"  said  I. 
"  I  couldn't  if  I  wanted  to.  I'm  broke. 
Where's  the  cheapest  place  in  town  where  I 
can  get  anything  to  eat  ? " 

It  seemed  as  though  the  words  jerked  them- 
selves out  of  me.  I  had  no  intention  of  con- 
fiding in  him.  "  Why,"  he  said  slowly,  and 
I  could  feel  him  looking  me  over,  "  I  guess 
Maggie  sells  about  the  cheapest  grub  you  could 
eat.  There's  a  Chinaman  up  the  street  who's 
cheaper,  but  I  don't  believe  you  could  make 
that  go  down.  Here's  Maggie's  place,  right 
here." 

So  I  climbed  out.  "  So  long,"  he  said,  and 
I  answered,  "  So  long,"  and  though  I  had  been 
hating  him  for  the  last  two  hours,  I  felt  as 
though  I  had  just  taken  leave  of  a  friend, 

5 


Roger  Drake 

I  went  into  the  shanty  he  had  pointed  out. 
There  amid  dirt,  and  noise,  an.d  manners  that 
to  me  were  almost  nauseatingly  swinish,  I 
choked  down  a  little  passable  food.  I  wasn't 
really  hungry  and  might  have  saved  myself 
the  cost  of  the  meal,  but  my  education  was 
only  beginning. 

As  soon  as  might  be  I  got  out  again  into 
the  clean  air,  and  with  my  bag  in  my  hand  — 
it  had  been  between  my  feet  while  I  was  eat- 
ing—  I  walked  along  up  the  street. 

That  street  was  the  whole  town.  I'm  not 
going  to  describe  it.  People  know  pretty  well, 
or  at  least  as  well  as  they  would  after  I'd  tried 
to  tell  them,  what  such  a  town  is  like.  It's 
bad  enough,  as  I  ought  to  know,  but  all  the 
bad  is  hung  out  where  it  shows.  Nobody 
wears  a  bridle  himself,  nor  expects  anybody 
else  to,  so  all  a  full-blooded  man's  passions  are 
turned  loose  in  the  street ;  but  there's  less 
malice  and  envy  and  the  other  sins  that  don't 
show  than  there  is  in  most  respectable  sub- 
urbs of  Eastern  cities. 

When  I  got  opposite  the  hotel,  —  The  Golden 
Palace  Hotel  and  Pleasure  Resort  was  the  full 
name  of  it,  painted  in  red  on  a  blue  signboard,  — 
my  first  acquaintance,  the  driver  of  the  buck- 
board,  stepped  up  and  asked  what  my  name  was. 

6 


Roger   Drake 

"  Drake,"  said  I.     "  What's  yours  ?  " 

"  Haines,"  he  answered.  "  Bill  Haines. 
Come  in  and  have  a  drink." 

I  didn't  much  want  to,  let  alone  with  him, 
for  he  had  brought  my  prospects  to  a  rather 
more  desperate  pass  than  they  would  have 
been  in  any  way,  but  I  thought  it  best  to  fol- 
low him.  We  took  our  drink  standing  at  the 
bar,  and  then,  after  an  inquiring  glance  at  the 
barkeeper,  he  led  me  into  a  little  room  behind 
it  and  shut  the  door  after  me. 

I  should  have  been  afraid  if  I  hadn't  felt 
that  nothing  that  could  happen  would  leave 
me  any  worse  off  than  I  was  already.  I  sup- 
pose that  walk  up  the  street  had  finished  off 
what  little  nerve  I  had  left.  I  honestly 
thought  he  meant  to  rob  me,  but  I  didn't 
much  care. 

"  Now,"  he  began,  "  was  that  straight  that 
you  told  me  —  that  you're  here  after  the  dust, 
and  that  you're  broke  to  begin  with  ?  "  I  told 
him  it  was. 

"  How  much  money  have  you  got  ?  " 

I  took  it  out  and  threw  it  on  the  table,  and 
he  counted  it.  I  think  there  was  something 
less  than  three  dollars.  "Well,"  he  said,  "I 
think  you're  sort  of  a  damned  fool."  I  was 
silent ;  I  agreed  with  him. 

7 


Roger  Drake 

Presently  he  began  asking  me  questions,  to 
find  out,  I  suppose,  just  how  helpless  I  was ; 
but  I  could  not  even  understand  them,  let 
alone  answer,  and  finally  he  asked  me,  with 
some  exasperation,  what  I  meant  to  do. 

I'd  stiffened  up  a  little  by  then.  "  I'll  take 
that  money,"  said  I,  "and  I'll  buy  whatever 
kind  of  grub  I  can  get  the  most  of  with  it,  and 
I'll  go  up  in  the  mountains  there  and  hunt 
around  till  I  find  something.  When  I've  gone 
through  the  grub,  I'll  eat  leaves,  and  if  I  starve 
to  death,  there's  no  harm  done  to  anybody." 

"  That  sounds  more  like  business,"  he  said. 
"  Now  sit  down  there  and  listen  to  me." 

I  think  he  must  have  talked  to  me  for  an 
hour,  about  all  sorts  of  matters,  but  mostly 
about  the  different  ways  he  knew  about  of  min- 
ing gold,  and  about  the  kind  of  men  I'd  meet. 
He  told  me  the  kind  to  look  out  for,  and  the 
kind  to  trust.  He  came  nearer  to  giving  away 
a  complete  education  ready  made  than  any  man 
ever  did  before,  unless  it  was  Polonius,  and 
when  he  came  to  the  end,  he  turned  round  and 
made  me  tell  it  all  back  to  him.  "  Well,"  he 
said,  "  you  seem  to  catch  on  quick  enough  when 
you  get  started." 

Then  he  began  naming  over  a  list  of  the 
things  I'd  want,  with  the  prices  I'd  have  to  pay 


Roger   Drake 

for  everything.  "  I  don't  know  what  that  comes 
to,  all  together,"  he  said,  but  I  did  and  I  told 
him.  It  wasn't  so  much,  but  it  made  the  two 
dollars  and  odd  silver  lying  on  the  table  look 
like  a  joke. 

"  Never  mind  that,"  he  said.  "  And  you 
need  a  gun." 

I  told  him  I  had  a  revolver  in  my  bag,  and 
he  took  it  out  and  looked  it  over  gravely.  It 
was  silver-mounted,  short-barrelled — just  such 
a  gun  as  many  a  timorous  man  in  the  East 
sleeps  with  under  his  pillow. 

"  That'd  look  very  pretty  hanging  up  on  the 
Christmas  tree,"  he  said,  without  the  trace  of  a 
smile,  "  but  where  you're  going  it'd  get  you 
into  more  trouble  than  it'd  get  you  out  of. 
Now  then,"  he  went  on,  "  I  want  to  say  that  I 
have  made  a  mistake.  I  sized  you  up  for  a 
chap  who'd  come  out  to  see  what  we  was  like, 
and  I  thought  I  might  as  well  begin  to  show 
you."  He  threw  some  money  on  the  table 
with  mine.  "  That  four  dollars  and  a  half  be- 
longs to  you.  The  regular  fare  here  is  fifty 
cents." 

That  almost  broke  me  up,  and  before  I  could 
find  my  voice,  he  added  some  more  to  the  little 
pile  on  the  table. 

"  Hold  on,"  said  I,  "  I'll  take  four  and  a 
9 


Roger   Drake 

half,  if  you  say  it's  mine,  and  —  and  thank  you, 
but  I  won't  take  the  other." 

"  I  guess  that's  as  good  clean  money  as 
you'll  find,"  he  said.  "  Put  it  in  your  pocket. 
You  know  what  things'll  cost  you  now ;  don't 
pay  any  more  than  I  told  you.  I  guess 
your  best  chance  of  finding  pay  dirt  is  up 
Broken  Arm  way.  I've  heard  so.  Anyhow, 
Jim  Taylor  is  driving  that  way  to-morrow,  and 
he'll  give  you  a  lift  if  you  want  it.  Give  me 
that  toy  gun  of  yours ;  I  can  use  it.  And  take 
this  one  ;  there  ain't  a  better  this  side  of  the  Big 
Muddy." 

He  laid  it  on  the  table  too.  It  was  a  long, 
blue-barrelled,  single-action  Colt,  44.  I've  got 
it  yet.  I  didn't  know  how  much  that  gift 
meant  at  the  time,  but  I've  found  out  since. 

I  was  still  in  two  minds  about  taking  his 
money  when  I  thought  of  the  bag.  I  had 
already  caught  on  to  him  well  enough  to  know 
that  he  would  resent  an  attempt  to  use  him  as 
a  pawnbroker,  so  I  told  him  I'd  take  his  money, 
and  repay  him  out  of  the  first  dust  I  found. 
Then  I  went  on,  "  I'll  leave  this  bag  with  you, 
if  you'll  keep  it  for  me,  and  if  I  don't  come 
back  pretty  soon,  it's  yours.  There  are  some 
little  things  in  it  you  may  like." 

So  we  shook  hands  on  that,  and  I  started 
10 


Roger   Drake 

out  for  my  kit.  I  had  everything  ready  before 
dark,  ate  a  good  supper  at  Maggie's,  rolled  up 
in  my  blanket  behind  her  shanty,  and  slept  like 
a  dog  all  night.  Next  morning  I  started  out 
with,  Jim  Taylor  for  Broken  Arm  Camp. 

I  could  write  a  whole  book  of  adventures 
about  those  next  two  years :  how  I  earned  the 
money  I  owed  Haines  by  cooking  for  the  camp 
at  Broken  Arm,  and  sent  it  back  to  him ;  how 
after  I  got  to  thinking  I  knew  something,  I 
started  off  on  my  own  hook  to  strike  it  rich ; 
how  I  lived  up  in  the  mountains,  and  worked 
along  the  sides  of  the  mountain  streams,  some- 
times thinking  I'd  found  the  stuff,  and  then 
finding  out  that  I  hadn't ;  how  in  the  winter  I 
got  used  to  seeing  the  painters  or  mountain 
lions  cowering  around  my  fire  at  night,  and 
how  I  shot  a  rabid  polecat  once  right  in  my 
tent ;  how  I  worked  eighty  dollars'  worth  of 
gold  in  one  day  out  of  a  little  bar  in  a  creek 
bed  up  on  the  far  side  of  Red  Leaf  Mountain, 
and  then  worked  that  creek  for  six  months 
afterward  and  never  found  an  ounce ;  and  how 
along  in  the  fall,  a  snowslide  came  down  and 
buried  me.  When  I  came  to,  I  had  my  hand 
up  to  my  nose,  so  I  could  breathe  a  very  little 
and  could  just  move  the  fingers  of  that  hand, 
but  I  began  pushing  the  snow  away  with  that, 

ii 


Roger   Drake 

and  gradually  got  my  arms  free,  and  so  dug 
myself  out,  and  then  with  nothing  but  Bill 
Raines's  gun  and  a  half-dozen  cartridges,  I 
walked  a  hundred  miles  to  the  nearest  camp. 
They  called  me  Snowslide  Drake  down  there, 
and  the  name  followed  me  for  a  long  while. 
Years  and  years  later,  when  the  Leeds-Butler 
gang  tried  to  freeze  me  out  on  an  ore-crusher 
I'd  patented,  and  after  I'd  come  down  on  them 
pretty  hard,  the  newspapers  took  up  that  name 
again. 

But  those  two  years  aren't  really  a  part  of 
this  story,  because  when  they  were  all  over,  I 
came  back  to  where  I'd  started  from  with  just 
about  as  much  money  as  I'd  had  then.  The 
place  had  changed  so  that  I  would  hardly  have 
known  it.  There  must  have  been  ten  thousand 
people  there,  though  it  was  almost  as  rough  as 
it  had  been  when  I  first  struck  the  place. 

I  was  afraid  I  mightn't  find  Bill  Haines, 
for  the  tenure  of  life  is  pretty  uncertain  in  a 
place  like  that,  but  before  I'd  walked  a  hundred 
yards  down  the  street  I  saw  him,  loafing  just  as 
he'd  been  before,  out  in  front  of  the  Golden 
Palace. 

I  walked  straight  up  to  him.  "  Do  you 
know  me  ?  "  I  asked. 

"  No,"  said  he.     "  What's  your  name  ?  " 

12 


Roger   Drake 

"  Drake,"  said  I. 

"  So  it  is,"  he  said,  as  he  looked  at  me.  "  I 
thought  you  were  dead,  my  boy."  And  with 
that  he  dealt  me  a  blow  on  the  back  which  two 
years  before  would  have  caved  me  in. 

He  took  me  down  to  his  shanty,  and  there 
he  looked  me  over  again.  "  I  guess  my  mind 
must  be  about  worked  out,"  he  said.  "  I  didn't 
know  I  could  forget  a  face."  It  was  no  wonder 
he  had  forgotten  mine,  and  I  said  so.  The 
two  years  had  seamed  it  as  twenty  of  ordinary 
living  would  not  have  done,  and  since  those  six 
months  on  Red  Leaf  Mountain  my  hair  has 
had  more  white  than  black  in  it. 

I'd  never  been  in  his  diggings  before,  so  I 
took  a  good  look  around,  and  what  first  caught 
my  eyes  was  the  contents  of  my  hand-bag  laid 
out  in  a  row  on  a  shelf.  There  were  a  pair  of 
razors,  a  hair  brush  with  a  silver  back,  a  comb, 
and  a  silver-handled  lathering-brush.  "You 
haven't  been  using  them  very  hard,"  said  I,  for 
they  looked  exactly  as  they  had  two  years 
before. 

"  What  should  I  use  them  for  ? "  he  de- 
manded. "  But  it's  taken  most  of  my  time 
keeping  them  cleaned  up.  Sit  down  there  and 
tell  me  all  about  it." 

I  went  through  the  whole  yarn.  At  the  end 
13 


Roger  Drake 

of  it  I  saw  Bill  reaching  for  his  pocket-book. 
"  No  you  don't,"  said  I.  "  I'm  taking  care  of 
myself."  He  always  had  money,  —  not  that 
stage  driving  was  lucrative,  but  he  was  the  best 
poker-player  in  the  county,  —  and  he  liked  to 
spend  it.  "All  right,"  said  he,  "but  you 
needn't  be  so  short  about  it." 

"  Bill,"  said  I,  —  for  an  idea  had  just  come 
into  my  head,  —  "  how  many  barber  shops  are 
there  in  town  ?  " 

"  I  don't  know.    Ain't  one  enough  for  you  ?  " 

"  Because,"  I  went  on,  "  if  there's  business 
enough  to  go  round,  I  think  I'll  open  up 
another." 

"  With  that  kit  of  tools  ?  "  he  asked,  bright- 
ening up. 

"Yes,"  said  I. 

He  took  right  hold  of  the  scheme,  and  made 
such  glowing  prophecies  that  my  own  enthu- 
siasm was  almost  swamped.  I  told  him  I'd 
never  shaved  anybody  but  myself  in  all  my  life, 
but  Bill  didn't  seem  to  think  that  had  anything 
to  do  with  it.  "  You're  a  good  square  fellow," 
he  said,  "  and  you  can  handle  a  gun,  I  guess," 
—  that  was  important  in  Bill's  eyes,  if  handling 
a  razor  wasn't,  —  "  and  if  you  don't  make  a  go 
of  it,  I'll  know  the  reason  why." 

So  I  hired  a  one-room  store,  and  sawed  off 
H 


Roger   Drake 

the  back  legs  of  a  kitchen  chair,  and  bought  a 
mirror  and  some  soap  and  towels.  I  painted  a 
sign  like  this  :  — 

THE  SILVER-BACK  TONSORIAL  RESORT. 

Plain  Shave  150. 

Fancy    "  250. 

Hair  Cut  _5°c. 

When  I  was  all  ready  for  business,  with  my 
kit  laid  out  on  a  table  right  in  the  window, 
I  had  just  ten  cents  left. 

My  first  customer  didn't  keep  me  waiting 
long.  He  was  a  big,  black-haired  fellow  with  a 
beard  of  about  four  days'  standing,  stiff  as  a 
stove-brush.  He  wanted  a  "  fancy  "  shave,  so 
I  tucked  a  towel  round  his  neck  and  began  to 
lather  him.  (If  you  took  a  plain  shave,  you 
lathered  yourself  and  washed  your  own  face 
afterwards.)  Then  I  took  one  of  the  razors  and 
began  to  whittle  away  at  him.  I  didn't  make 
much  real  progress,  for  the  blade  would  skate 
along  the  top  of  his  beard  without  getting  more 
than  a  stray  hair,  and  now  and  then  making  a 
small  chop  into  his  face.  He  stood  it  for  a 
while,  but  at  last  he  got  out  from  under  my 
hand  and  sat  up. 

"  Look  here,"  he  said,  "  what  do  you  think 
you're  trying  to  do  ?  " 

'5 


Roger  Drake 

"  I'm  trying  to  learn  to  shave,"  said  I. 
"You're  the  first  man  I  ever  tried  it  on." 

"  Well,"  said  he,  as  the  situation  dawned  on 
him,  "  I  guess  Bill  Haines  is  the  skunk  I  want 
to  see  about  this.  He  sent  me  round."  He 
handed  me  a  quarter,  and  began  wiping  the 
lather  off  his  face.  He  said  he  thought  he'd 
had  his  money's  worth  already  and  he  guessed 
he'd  leave  his  beard  on  a  little  longer  anyway. 

He  came  back  half  an  hour  later,  clean 
shaved,  and  with  a  friend  in  tow,  the  bar-keeper 
at  the  Golden  Palace.  "Here's  the  place," 
said  my  first  customer,  leading  him  in.  "  Here's 
where  I  just  got  the  quickest,  easiest  shave  I've 
had  for  three  years.  Sit  down  and  let  him  fix 
you  up." 

The  bar-keeper  looked  at  the  part  of  his  face 
that  I'd  been  at  work  on  a  bit  dubiously.  "  That 
ain't  bis  work,"  said  my  new  friend.  "  I  got 
them  cuts  trying  to  shave  myself." 

So  the  bar-keeper  got  into  the  chair,  and  I 
took  a  good  hold  on  him,  and  by  keeping  at  it 
got  most  of  his  whiskers  off.  But  the  tears 
ran  right  down  his  face  when  I  shaved  his 
upper  lip.  When  it  was  all  over,  he  didn't 
know  whether  to  be  mad  or  not,  but  he  decided 
at  last  that  the  drinks  were  on  him,  and  he  and 
the  first  man  went  out  to  look  for  a  new  victim. 
16 


"I   TOOK    A   GOOD   LOOK   AT   HIM." 


j*  Roger  Drake 

They  kept  my  shop  full  of  people  all  day, 
for  it  was  the  best  practical  joke  the  town  had 
had  in  six  months,  and  by  night  I  had  learned 
how  to  shave  and  had  about  ten  dollars  in  my 
pocket. 

From  that  day  I  made  money  right  along, 
moved  into  a  bigger  place,  and  had  three  chairs 
full  most  of  the  time.  It  was  a  regular  hang- 
out, and  rivalled  the  Golden  Palace  bar-room 
in  popularity.  I  was  getting  along  faster  than 
many  of  the  fellows  who  were  supposed  to  have 
struck  it  rich. 

I  had  been  a  barber  for  about  six  months,  I 
think,  when  I  first  saw  George  Stanley,  the  man 
who  was  to  be  my  friend  and  then  my  enemy. 
Bill  Haines  had  already  told  me  that  there  was  a 
new  fellow  in  town,  a  thin,  red-haired  chap, 
with  no  lungs,  who'd  come  out  for  his  health. 
I  knew  him  from  Bill's  description,  and  when 
I  saw  him  passing  the  shop  I  took  a  good  look 
at  him.  What  I  first  thought  of  was,  there 
had  been  a  time  when  my  friends  were  like 
that.  I  won't  say  that  many  of  the  rough 
chaps  around  our  town  weren't  gentlemen  at 
heart,  but  George  Stanley  was  the  first  man  I 
had  seen  in  two  years  who  was  a  gentleman 
clear  out  to  his  finger-nails.  I  wanted  to  go 
out  and  shake  hands  with  him  on  the  spot,  but 
c  17 


Roger   Drake 

I  thought  better  of  it.  His  face  was  pale,  he 
had  a  good,  steady,  gray  eye  that  could  find 
yours  and  get  away  again  —  which  is  something 
that  every  eye  can't  do.  The  rest  of  his  face 
wasn't  very  striking. 

I  saw  him  once  or  twice  in  the  next  day  or 
two,  then  I  heard  that  he'd  gone  out  to  work 
a  cradle  on  Brown's  claim,  which  was  eight  or 
ten  miles  out  of  town.  It  was  about  two  weeks 
after  that  when  the  thing  occurred  that  led  to 
our  being  friends.  He  rode  in  just  before 
dark  on  Saturday  afternoon,  to  spend  Sunday 
in  town,  and  after  supper  he  came  down  to  my 
shop  to  get  shaved.  There  was  a  show  on 
at  the  Opera  House  that  night,  and  almost  all 
the  town  was  there.  I  had  let  my  two  helpers 
go  for  the  evening,  as  I  didn't  care  much  for 
that  kind  of  a  show  myself,  —  I  needn't  say 
what  kind  it  was,  —  so  I  was  the  only  man  in 
the  shop  when  Stanley  came  in. 

He  asked  me  why  I  wasn't  at  the  show,  and 
I  told  him ;  and  then  while  I  lathered  him  up, 
we  talked  about  things  in  general.  Before  I 
began  to  shave  him,  a  man  stuck  his  head  in 
the  door  and  said  that  Jim  Taylor  had  broke 
loose  again,  and  advised  me  to  put  the  light 
out  and  get  to  cover. 

"  What's  all  this  about  ?  "  Stanley  asked. 
18 


Roger   Drake 

"  It's  Jim  Taylor,"  said  I.  "  He's  got  drunk 
again,  and  is  out  trying  to  shoot  the  town. 
They'll  have  him  rounded  up  presently.  They 
wouldn't  put  up  with  that  from  everybody,  but 
Jim's  been  here  a  long  time,  and  he's  a  very 
good  sort  when  he  isn't  poisoned." 

By  that  time  we  heard  a  lot  of  noise  down 
the  street,  shouting  and  yelling,  and  every  other 
noise  you  can  think  of. 

"  Are  you  going  to  barricade  ?  "  Stanley 
asked. 

"  No,"  said  I.  "  I  keep  open  till  midnight 
every  Saturday  night,  no  matter  what  Jim 
Taylor  takes  it  into  his  head  to  do.  But,"  I 
went  on,  "  I  don't  see  any  reason  why  you 
should  stay  here.  He's  likely  to  pay  us  a 
visit,  and  there's  no  telling  what  he  may  do." 

He  settled  back  in  the  chair  as  cool  as  a 
man  could  be,  —  a  little  cooler  than  a  man 
could  be,  too,  I  guess,  if  it  comes  to  that, — 
and  said,  "  Oh,  well,  I'm  not  shaved  yet. 
You'd  better  go  ahead." 

It  wasn't  a  minute  after  this  when  Jim  lurched 
into  my  door,  fired  one  shot  back  into  the 
street,  and  then  put  one  into  the  middle  of 
each  of  my  looking-glasses.  I  hoped  that 
he'd  put  the  last  two  shots  into  the  lamp, 
and  then  I  could  get  him  before  he'd  have 

19 


Roger   Drake 

time  to  load.  But  instead  of  doing  that,  he 
covered  me.  I  shaved  right  along  and  spoke 
to  him  without  looking  up. 

"  That  was  a  fool  thing  to  do,  Jim,"  I  said 
as  I  wiped  the  lather  off  the  blade.  "  How're 
you  going  to  know  now  whether  I  get  your 
whiskers  off,  or  not  ? " 

You  can  play  that  successfully  on  a  drunken 
man  nine  times  in  ten.  He's  as  easily  diverted 
as  a  baby.  And  it  worked  with  Jim,  though 
not  just  as  I'd  meant  it  to  do.  "Tha's  right," 
he  said.  "  I'll  get  shaved.  I'll  fix  that  —  "  and 
he  rolled  out  a  string  of  obscene  epithets  meant 
to  designate  Stanley  —  "  so  that  he'll  never  need 
another  shave,  and  then  you  trim  me  up.  I 
won't  wait  for  a  — "  and  with  another  stream 
of  blasphemous  abuse  he  dropped  his  gun  dead 
on  Stanley. 

I  flung  up  my  hands,  the  razor  in  one  of 
them ;  for  I  knew  that  any  move  down  with 
them,  toward  a  pocket  or  a  drawer,  would  have 
brought  that  shot  with  it.  But  I  flashed  the 
lamplight  from  the  razor  into  his  eyes.  "  Jim 
Taylor,"  I  said,  "if  you  don't  put  up  that  gun, 
your  throat'll  be  cut  in  less'n  ten  seconds.  You'll 
bleed  like  a  pig  to-night,  Jim,  all  over  my  floor, 
unless  you  put  up  that  gun." 

I  don't  know  whether  I  really  hypnotized 
20 


Roger   Drake 

him  or  not,  but  he  stood  there,  uncertain,  for  a 
minute ;  and  I  said  it  again,  and  then  his  gun 
dropped,  and  he  staggered  across  the  room  and 
slumped  into  a  chair.  He  kept  getting  whiter 
and  whiter,  and  at  last  he  pitched  on  the  floor 
sick  as  a  dog.  When  the  fellows  came  for  him 
from  across  the  street,  he  went  with  them  with- 
out a  word. 

I  finished  shaving  Stanley,  —  the  lather  hadn't 
even  dried  on  his  face,  it  all  happened  so  quickly, 
—  and  when  he  got  up  he  was  as  white  as  Taylor 
had  been.  I  felt  pretty  well  shaken  myself,  so 
we  went  into  the  back  room  and  sat  down  and 
poured  two  drinks  out  of  an  old  bottle.  Stanley 
got  out  a  couple  of  cigars,  and  we  talked  till 
midnight. 

That  experience,  somehow,  got  rid  of  the 
preliminaries,  and  from  then  on  we  felt  like 
old  friends.  We  were  both  busy.  He  hardly 
ever  came  to  town  except  on  Sundays.  But 
those  days  we  generally  put  in  together,  taking 
long  walks  —  as  long  as  he  could  take  —  and 
talking  all  the  while ;  about  back  East,  and  how 
we  hoped  to  go  there,  and  what  we'd  do  to  en- 
joy ourselves ;  about  the  things  we  saw  every 
day  —  and  no  two  days  are  alike  in  that  part 
of  the  world.  But  always  in  the  end  we 
came  around  to  one  theme ;  the  theme  that 

21 


Roger  Drake 

every  man  in  that  region  had  in  his  mind  every 
hour  of  the  day,  and  many  and  many  of  the 
hours  of  the  night,  —  the  metal  that  was  in  the 
earth.  Finding  it,  getting  it  out,  growing  rich  on 
it,  failing  at  it,  dying  in  quest  for  it,  as  a  man  did 
every  little  while,  —  all  those  changes  we  rung 
on  the  same  unchanging  theme,  and  over  and 
over  the  ground  we  went  a  hundred  times. 

But  always  we  talked  about  it  impersonally ; 
always  we  kept  up  the  pretence  that  our  own 
interests  were  quite  different.  How  genuine 
he  thought  my  indifference  was  I  don't  know, 
but  I  believed  in  his.  I  knew  he  was  rich, 
and  that  he  was  seeking  and  finding  his  health, 
and  I  was  stupid  enough  to  think  that  enough 
to  fortify  him  against  the  fever  that  burns  in  a 
man  when  he  knows  that  the  gold  may  be  just 
under  his  feet. 

As  for  me,  I  had  lived  that  half-year  in  the 
barber's  shop  like  a  reformed  drunkard  who 
has  the  whiskey  where  he  can  smell  it.  All 
the  while,  and  at  night  especially,  I  was  more 
or  Jess  crazy.  I  knew  I  could  find  the  gold  if 
I'd  give  myself  one  more  trial.  I  knew  where 
it  was.  I  could  go  back  over  the  two  years  I'd 
been  on  the  trail,  and  see  just  where  I'd  missed 
it.  But  all  the  while  there  was  a  little  patch  of 
sanity  in  my  mind,  somewhere,  and  when  I'd 


22 


Roger   Drake 

get  back  on  that  I'd  see  what  a  fool  I  was.  So 
I  kept  up  the  bluff  before  the  boys,  that  I  was 
quite  contented  where  I  was  so  long  as  their 
whiskers  grew ;  I  kept  it  up  with  them  and 
with  Stanley,  and  with  myself  when  I  could. 

But  one  day  he  and  I  gave  ourselves  away. 
It  was  a  Sunday  afternoon,  and  we  were  up  in 
the  side  of  a  mountain,  stretched  out  under  a 
tree.  We'd  been  silent  a  long  while,  when  he 
sat  up,  and  flipped  away  a  stone  he'd  been  fool- 
ing with,  and  said  :  — 

"  Drake,  you  keep  telling  me  you  don't  be- 
lieve that  luck  has  much  to  do  with  it,  and  that 
if  a  fellow  went  about  it  the  right  way,  he'd  be 
sure  to  win.  Well,  do  you  believe  that  your- 
self? And  if  you  do,  why  don't  you  go  in  ?  " 

"  Well,  here's  a  question  for  you,"  said  I. 
"  What  do  you  think  I'm  running  that  barber 
shop  for  ?  Did  you  believe  me  when  I  said  I 
liked  it  ?  I'm  making  ten  to  fifteen  dollars  a 
day  and  I'm  holding  on  to  it,  and  when  I've 
got  enough  money  to  give  myself  the  right 
kind  of  start  —  well,  it'll  be  the  quickest  start 
you  ever  saw." 

He  gave  a  little,  short  laugh.  "There  are 
two  of  us  who've  been  fooled,"  said  he,  "  you 
and  I.  You  thought  I  was  here  for  my  health. 
I  was  for  the  first  week.  Since  then  I've  just 

23 


Roger  Drake 

been  waiting  till  my  body  was  as  good  as  the 
next  man's  before  I  started  in.  I'm  going  to 
begin  now,  and  you're  going  in  with  me,  and 
we'll  be  too  rich  to  count  it  before  we  get 
through.  I've  not  a  great  deal  of  my  own  now, 
but  enough  to  start  us  both,  and  I  can  get  more 
if  we  need  it.  Shake  on  it." 

I  shut  my  eyes  and  took  a  long  breath.  If 
I  hadn't  been  fighting  and  winning  the  battle 
every  day  for  six  months,  I'd  have  fallen  in  that 
time,  for  sure.  As  it  was,  I  let  myself  go  for  a 
minute,  just  for  fun,  and  told  myself  we  could 
start  to-morrow.  Then  I  sat  up  and  laughed. 

"  Stanley,"  said  I,  "  I  thought  there  was 
one  sane  man  in  this  town,  but  you're  as  crazy 
as  the  rest  of  us.  If  we  did  that,  we'd  come  to 
grief  just  the  way  I  did,  only  with  twice  as 
big  a  splash.  That  isn't  the  kind  of  a  start  I 
mean.  The  first  thing  I  want  to  do  is  to  go 
East  and  get  the  fever  out  of  myself —  get  so 
that  I  can  tell  the  difference  between  hard  sense 
and  a  gilt-edged  dream.  And  then  I  want  to 
know  the  theory  of  the  thing,  as  near  as  I  can, 
from  beginning  to  end,  —  chemistry,  geology, 
metallurgy,  the  whole  outfit.  If  I  had  all  the 
money  I  wanted  this  minute,  it'd  be  two  or 
three  years  before  I'd  be  ready  to  get  after 
the  stuff." 

24 


Roger  Drake 

I  stopped  there,  but  he  didn't  say  anything 
for  quite  a  while.  At  last  he  shook  his  head. 
"  It's  no  use.  I  want  you  for  a  partner,  but  I 
can't  wait  that  long.  I  mean  to  be  rich  by 
then.  But  look  here,  why  don't  we  try  it  both 
ways  at  once.  You  go  back  East.  I'll  give 
you  letters  to  my  people  there,  and  I'll  see  you 
through." 

"  You  needn't  do  anything  of  that  sort  yet," 
said  I.  "  I've  got  enough  to  make  a  start.  If 
I  need  help  later,  I'll  call  on  you." 

"  You  won't  have  to  wait  very  long.  When 
I  strike  it  rich,  I'll  wire  you,  and  you  can  come 
back  directly.  A  gold  mine  in  your  hand  is 
worth  five  or  six  in  a  book." 

"  That's  true,"  said  I,  "  but  what  you  find 
will  be  your  gold  mine." 

"  Rubbish,"  said  he,  as  easily  as  though  he'd 
been  talking  about  street-car  fares  or  cigars, 
"  the  partnership  begins  to-day.  What  either 
of  us  finds  is  ours.  And  one  way  or  the  other, 
we'll  sweep  the  board.  You'll  shake  on  that, 
anyhow." 

So  we  shook  hands,  and  started  along  down- 
hill. 


CHAPTER   II 

WE  wasted  no  time  getting  about  it.  Two 
or  three  days  later  Stanley  started  with 
his  outfit  for  Bartlett's  Creek,  —  the  rush  up 
that  way  had  just  begun,  —  and  within  a  week 
I  had  closed  out  my  business  and  started  back 
East. 

I  did  not  try  to  get  a  job  anywhere,  for  I  had 
money  enough  to  keep  me  along  for  a  while, 
and  I  wanted  to  give  my  undivided  attention 
to  my  work  as  long  as  I  could. 

Stanley  had  given  me  a  letter  of  introduction 
to  his  father,  and  for  the  first  two  weeks  that 
white  envelope  lay  about  on  my  table  till  I  was 
ashamed  to  look  at  it. 

However,  that  letter  had  to  be  presented,  so 
one  night  I  dressed  as  well  as  I  could  and  set 
out  with  it.  The  door  was  opened  by  a  big 
darky  in  livery,  who  made  no  secret  of  the 
fact  that  he  didn't  know  what  to  do  with  me. 
I  had  handed  him  my  letter  and  given  him  my 
name,  but  he  didn't  wholly  approve  of  my 
looks,  so  he  didn't  ask  me  in,  and  seemed 
inclined  to  direct  me  to  the  area  door.  I  gave 
26 


Roger  Drake 

him  no  time  to  do  that,  but  stepped  inside, 
gave  him  my  name  again,  and  told  him  rather 
sharply  to  tell  Mr.  Stanley,  if  he  was  at  home, 
that  I  should  like  to  see  him.  At  that  he 
weakened,  and  showed  me,  rather  grudgingly, 
into  the  front  drawing-room.  I  sat  down,  a 
great  deal  ruffled  by  his  manner,  though  as  I 
think  of  the  figure  I  must  have  cut  that  night, 
it  seems  pretty  well  warranted. 

But  in  a  moment  I  forgot  the  darky  and  his 
impudence,  for  I  saw  a  vision.  She  was  framed 
in  a  doorway,  a  slim,  delicate,  haughty  little 
beauty  in  a  black  gown.  Her  black  hair  was 
parted  and  coiled  high  on  her  head,  and  though 
she  held  her  head  high,  her  eyelids  drooped,  with 
that  same  lazy,  commanding  air  that  they  have 
in  a  picture  of  Cleopatra  that  I  bought  just  the 
other  day.  Her  gown,  rich  with  some  ornament 
of  jet,  left  her  arms  and  neck  bare,  and  whatever 
light  there  was  in  the  hall  was  shaded,  so  that 
it  threw  a  reddish  glow  on  her.  I  had  only  a 
glance  at  her,  for  she  hardly  paused  at  the  door, 
and  then  went  on  and  left  me,  wondering. 

Mr.  Stanley  did  not  keep  me  waiting  long. 
He  greeted  me  cordially,  and  took  me  up  to 
his  library  at  the  top  of  the  house.  Then,  after 
he'd  got  me  into  an  easy-chair  and  given  me 
something  to  smoke,  he  began  to  ask  me  ques- 

27 


Roger   Drake 


tions.  He  was  a  shrewd-faced  old  man,  and  he 
asked  shrewd  questions,  but  what  he  did  was 
shrewdest  of  all.  For  if  you  want  to  find  a 
man  out,  you  must  begin  by  making  him 
comfortable. 

He  asked  me  first  about  his  son,  his  health 
and  spirits,  and  then  what  I  thought  of  his 
prospects  of  succeeding  at  his  new  venture.  I 
told  him  frankly  that  I  thought  he  was  sure 
to  fail. 

"  And  yet,"  he  said,  "  I  understand  that  you 
didn't  try  to  dissuade  him  from  going." 

"  No,"  said  I,  "  I  couldn't  have  done  it, 
in  the  first  place,  and  then,  even  if  I'd  thought 
I  could,  I  believe  I'd  have  let  him  go  any- 
way." 

He  waited  for  me  to  go  on,  so  I  went  ahead 
and  explained  myself.  I  told  him  my  own 
experience  with  the  fever,  and  how  my  two 
years,  with  the  failures  at  the  end  of  them,  were 
the  best  part  of  what  education  I'd  had ;  that 
they'd  given  me  something  that  a  man  who 
meant  to  make  his  fortune  as  a  miner  couldn't 
well  do  without.  I  remember  he  smiled  a  little 
over  my  offhand  way  of  talking  about  making 
a  fortune.  But  he  went  on  and  asked  me  about 
my  own  plans,  and  he  seemed  to  approve  of  the 
way  I  was  going  at  it. 

28 


Roger   Drake 

All  the  while  we'd  been  talking  I'd  kept  my 
mind  more  or  less  well  down  to  earth  ;  but  it 
was  with  an  effort  that  my  thoughts  stayed 
with  him  instead  of  wandering  off  to  the  vision 
I  had  seen  a  while  before.  And  as  I  answered 
his  questions,  I  was  asking  myself  others  :  who 
was  she  ?  why  hadn't  Stanley  told  me  about 
her  ?  had  he  ever  seen  her  himself?  and  should 
I  ever  see  her  again  ?  I  didn't  try  to  answer 
these  questions,  because,  as  I  said,  I  was  really 
paying  Mr.  Stanley  pretty  close  attention,  but 
they  were  getting  themselves  ready  to  puzzle 
me  when  I  should  be  left  alone  with  them. 
Mr.  Stanley  himself  spared  me  the  trouble  of 
guessing,  for  just  as  I  got  up  to  go  he  said :  — 

"  You  must  come  to  dinner  with  us  some 
night  next  week.  Will  Tuesday  be  convenient 
to  you  ? " 

I  was  taken  by  surprise,  and  for  the  moment 
perfectly  helpless.  I  hesitated  and  stammered, 
and  he  went  on.  "  There  will  be  nobody  but 
ourselves,  my  wife  and  daughter,  and  Miss 
Broughton.  She's  a  new  member  of  our 
family,  a  distant  cousin  of  my  wife's,  who  has 
come  to  live  with  us.  They'll  all  want  to  meet 
you." 

He  was  talking  along  out  of  pure  good 
nature,  seeing  that  I  was  incapable  of  speech, 

29 


Roger   Drake 

but  at  last  I  got  myself  together,  and  told  him 
I'd  be  very  glad  to  come. 

I  walked  along  home  that  night  with  my 
mind  turned  upside  down.  When  I  had  come 
to  the  city,  I'd  made  up  my  mind  that  I  knew 
altogether  too  well  how  to  have  a  good  time, 
and  that  I'd  better  wait  till  I'd  laid  the  founda- 
tion of  my  pile  before  I  started  in.  I  said  I 
wouldn't  buy  any  respectable  clothes,  I  wouldn't 
go  to  any  entertainments,  I'd  just  be  a  hermit 
and  do  nothing  but  study,  or  grind,  as  the  boys 
say  nowadays,  until  I  was  a  competent  mining 
engineer.  Well,  it  wasn't  too  late  yet.  I  could 
tell  Mr.  Stanley  just  how  the  case  stood,  and 
that  I  thought  I'd  better  not  come,  and  he'd 
understand  and  not  ask  me  again,  and  I  didn't 
think  he'd  be  offended  either.  And  then  I 
thought  of  the  vision  I'd  seen  framed  in  the 
doorway,  and  that  it  was  in  my  power  to  see  it 
again,  and  my  good  intention  melted. 

I  vacillated  over  the  decision  like  a  school- 
girl over  her  party  frocks,  but  the  first  thing 
the  next  morning  I  went  to  a  tailor  and  ordered 
a  dress  suit.  It  came  home  the  day  of  the 
dinner,  and  I  can  remember  yet  what  a  luxury 

it  was   to    be  well    dressed    again,  to    go   out 

j   j-  . 

and  dine  again  in  a  house  and  at  a  table  like 

theirs.     I  mean  just    the   physical   enjoyment 
30 


Roger   Drake 

of  it,  which  nobody  can  understand  but  one 
who  has  been  out  of  the  world  as  I  had,  and 
has  come  back. 

There  were  only  three  people  in  the  drawing- 
room  when  I  entered,  —  Mrs.  Stanley,  her 
daughter,  and  a  young  fellow  of  about  my  own 
age  named  Archibald.  Mrs.  Stanley  apologized 
for  her  husband,  and  said  he  would  be  down  di- 
rectly. I  made  a  tremendous  effort  to  take  hold 
and  talk  as  if  I  were  all  there,  but  of  course  I 
wasn't.  I  had  thought  during  those  intervening 
days  that  perhaps  there  was  some  mistake  about 
it  —  that  my  vision  was  not  Miss  Broughton 
after  all,  or  that  she  would  not  be  at  the  dinner, 
or  that  when  I  saw  her  again  she  would  not  be 
the  same,  and  now  I  wondered,  besides,  what 
Archibald's  presence  there,  on  that  familiar 
footing,  might  mean.  I  disliked  him,  until  I 
learned  a  little  later  that  evening  that  he  was 
engaged  to  Miss  Stanley. 

After  about  five  minutes  Mr.  Stanley  came 
down,  and  we  began  saying  the  same  things  all 
over  again.  Then  there  was  a  little  lull,  when 
all  the  preliminaries  were  over,  and  we  heard  a 
step  on  the  stairs,  and  a  rustle  of  silk,  and 
then  — 

No,  there  was  no  mistake ;  she  stood  there 
in  the  doorway.  The  others  who  were  seeing 

31 


Roger   Drake 

her  every  day  looked  at  her  in  silence  and  as 
for  me,  I  know  I  caught  my  breath.  Fletcher, 
who  would  have  been  a  painter  had  he  not 
been  a  greater  man  at  something  else,  is  the 
only  one  of  my  friends  who  can  remember  her 
as  she  was  then,  and  sometimes  yet,  we  speak 
of  her  beauty. 

She  was  little — wonderfully  little — but  unlike 
any  other  little  woman  I  have  ever  seen.  Most 
of  them  have,  or  put  on,  a  sort  of  childlikeness, 
playful  or  innocent,  and  they  have  a  whole 
catalogue  of  tricks  and  attractions  that  are  all 
their  own.  But  not  one  of  them  all  did  she 
claim.  She  was  as  serene,  as  completely  self- 
possessed  and  dignified,  as  a  little  goddess.  She 
greeted  the  others  with  a  comprehensive  little 
bow,  and  then  her  eyes  fell  on  me.  There  was 
for  just  the  merest  instant  a  look  of  surprise  in 
her  face,  which  I  at  the  time  attributed  to  my 
gray  hair ;  then  she  smiled,  and  as  Mrs.  Stan- 
ley repeated  our  names,  she  walked  over  to  me 
and  shook  hands.  I  do  not  remember  what 
she  said,  —  some  commonplace  or  other,  —  and 
I  cannot  possibly  describe  the  way  she  did  it ; 
quite  deliberately,  yet  as  naturally  as  though  it 
had  been  on  an  impulse. 

I  took  her  in  to  dinner,  and  though  at  so 

O 

small  a  table   the    talk  is  all   general,  yet  she 
32 


Roger   Drake 

appropriated  what  I  said,  and  seemed  to  take  a 
friendly  personal  interest  in  it,  and  she  did  it 
all  with  hardly  a  word  from  herself.  They  got 
me  to  talking  about  my  experiences  out  West ; 
indeed,  that  was  about  all  there  was  for  me  to 
talk  about,  and  they  kept  me  going  the  greater 
part  of  the  time. 

When  I  was  leaving,  Adele  Broughton  asked 
me  to  come  again,  and  she  did  it  in  such  a 
way  that  her  invitation  was  quite  independent 
of  the  one  the  others  gave  me,  though  theirs 
was  very  cordial.  She  made  it  seem,  some- 
how, that  I  was  an  older  friend  of  hers  than 
of  theirs.  I  do  not  know  how  she  did  that, 
either. 

Archibald  left  the  house  when  I  did,  and  we 
walked  along  together.  "  You're  so  much  in- 
terested in  mining  and  that  sort  of  thing,"  he 
said,  "that  I  think  you'd  be  interested  in  a 
friend  of  mine." 

"  Is  that  his  business  ?  "  I  asked. 

"  Oh,  no,"  said  he,  "  though  I  dare  say  he 
knows  all  about  it.  He's  tremendously  up  in 
everything  of  that  kind,  but  his  hobby  is  elec- 
tricity. He's  quite  crazy  about  it.  He  has 
a  fine  house,  and  he's  turned  it  into  a  regular 
workshop.  He  lives  there  alone  most  of  the 
time.  His  servants  all  leave  him.  You'd  like 
D  33 


Roger  Drake 

him,  though,  I'm  sure,  and  I  think,  perhaps, 
he'd  like  you." 

"  I  meant  that  all  right,"  he  went  on,  when 
he  saw  what  he'd  said.  "  He's  a  queer  duck, 
and  all  he  asks  of  most  people  is  that  they  let 
him  alone.  He  tolerates  me,  I  suppose,  be- 
cause I  don't  even  know  enough  about  his 
hobbies  to  ask  foolish  questions.  We  go  by 
his  place,  and  if  we  see  a  light,  I'll  take  you  up." 

I  said  I  was  afraid  it  was  pretty  late,  but  he 
laughed  and  said  that  Fletcher  didn't  really  get 
waked  up  till  after  sundown.  The  house  was 
lighted  when  we  came  to  it,  and  my  companion, 
remarking  that  the  door-bell  was  a  dummy,  let 
himself  and  me  in  without  ceremony.  We 
stumbled  up  a  dark  stairway  and  walked  into 
the  room  where  the  light  was. 

Fletcher  was  seated  at  a  high  draughting- 
table.  He  said  "  Hello "  to  Archibald  and 
when  I  was  introduced  to  him  bowed  gravely, 
without  rising.  Archibald  motioned  me  to  a 
chair,  dropped  into  another  himself,  mentioned 
where  we'd  been,  and  then  began  to  comment 
on  the  disorder  of  the  room,  Fletcher  all  the 
while  apparently  a  thousand  miles  away.  But 
suddenly  he  turned  to  me  and  said :  — 

"What  do  you  think  of  Miss  Broughton, 
Mr.  Drake  ? " 

34 


FLETCHER  ! 


Roger   Drake 

He  might  have  introduced  any  subject  but 
that  without  surprising  me.  He  was,  as  he 
still  is,  the  most  angular  man  I  ever  saw ;  his 
hair  and  beard  were  thick  and  sandy  and  dis- 
orderly ;  he  wore  heavy  steel-rimmed  spectacles, 
and  the  idea  of  his  knowing  of  the  existence  of 
a  creature  like  Adele  Broughton  was  ridiculous. 
But  he  had  almost  the  finest  voice  that  I  have 
ever  heard.  It  was  enough  to  make  me  like 
him  from  that  moment. 

I  answered  that  I  thought  her  the  most  beau- 
tiful woman  I  had  ever  seen,  and  he  nodded 
gravely  in  assent.  Then  he  told  me  of  the  first 
time  he  had  ever  seen  her,  and  I,  in  turn,  told 
him  how  she  had  appeared  to  me  in  the  door- 
way that  other  evening.  Archibald  grew  more 
and  more  impatient  as  this  colloquy  went  on, 
and  finally  he  broke  in,  addressing  me. 

"  This  man  Fletcher  acts  in  the  most  insane 
way  about  that  girl.  He's  never  spoken  to  her 
or  even  met  her.  He  avoids  meeting  her, 
though  he  knows  the  Stanleys  well,  as  though 
she  had  the  plague.  But  he  goes  to  church 
every  Sunday  and  sits  where  he  can  see  her, 
and  then  comes  home  and  makes  sketches  of 
her  from  memory.  He  has  a  portfolio  full  of 
them,  and  I  believe  he  writes  poems,  too,  though 
he'll  never  admit  it." 

3S 


Roger   Drake 

"  No,  no,"  said  Fletcher,  quickly.  "  She  is 
not  the  sort  to  write  a  poem  about.  She's  too 
literal.  Her  beauty's  all  expressed.  You  could 
transcribe  it  line  for  line  with  a  brush  if  you  were 
a  good  enough  painter.  But  a  poet  could  make 
nothing  of  her  at  all." 

"  Well,  neither  can  I,"  said  Archibald,  "  nor 
of  what  you're  trying  to  explain  to  us,  either. 
Come  and  show  us  the  toy  shop.  Here's 
Drake,  who's  a  prospective  mining  engineer, 
and  interested  in  all  your  sort  of  thing,  and 
you  won't  talk  to  him  about  anything  but 
pretty  girls." 

That  put  an  end  to  Fletcher's  conversational 
vein  for  that  evening.  He  turned  back  to  his 
drawing,  merely  saying  that  there  were  some 
books  about  the  room  which  might,  perhaps, 
interest  me. 

Archibald  took  what  seemed  to  me  the  re- 
buke, without  the  least  embarrassment.  He 
dropped  into  an  easy-chair  and  lighted  a  cigar, 
and  I  followed  Fletcher's  suggestion  and  began 
looking  over  the  books.  They  occupied  nearly 
all  the  wall  space  in  the  room,  and  it  was  a  large 
one.  I  passed  by  several  sections,  as  soon  as 
I  saw  that  they  contained  nothing  of  interest  to 
me,  but  presently  I  came  to  his  technical  books, 
and  there  I  stopped. 

36 


Roger   Drake 

It  was  the  first  technical  library  I  had  ever 
seen,  and  the  titles  on  the  backs  of  those  clumsy 
volumes  attracted  me  more  strongly  than  I  can 
tell  you.  Here  were  books  on  chemistry,  on 
"mathematics,  on  metals  and  their  reduction,  on 
electricity ;  here  was  all  the  knowledge  that  I 
could  want,  here  were  just  the  things  I  had 
vaguely  felt  the  need  of  knowing,  set  down  in 
black  and  white.  I  finally  took  down  a  book 
and  began  turning  over  the  pages.  They 
bristled  with  formulas  which  of  course  I  could 
not  understand,  and  I  don't  know  why  they 
attracted  me,  unless  because  I  felt  that  here  was 
the  exact  truth  about  things,  instead  of  the 
guesswork  that  I  had  been  trying  to  scramble 
along  with. 

I  don't  know  how  long  afterward  it  was  that 
Archibald  announced  with  a  yawn  that  he  was 
going  home,  and  I  reluctantly  said  that  I  would 
go  with  him.  "  Come  again  both  of  you," 
called  Fletcher  as  we  started  downstairs,  "  only 
come  at  different  times." 

"  Well,"  said  I,  when  we  were  in  the  street 
again,  "  it's  clear  enough  what  he  meant  so  far 
as  I'm  concerned." 

"  He  meant  just  what  he  said,"  answered 
Archibald.  "  He  wants  you  to  come  again, 
when  he  can  turn  loose  and  talk  about  what 

37 


Roger  Drake 

he's  interested  in  without  having  a  trifler  like 
me  around  to  put  in  my  oar." 

He  did  not  succeed  in  reassuring  me  very 
completely,  and  the  next  time  I  went  back  to 
Fletcher's  house  I  thought  it  was  an  even 
chance  that  he'd  turn  me  out  without  ceremony  ; 
but  I  did  go  back,  for  the  attractions  of  the 
place  were  too  strong  for  my  misgivings.  As 
I  remember  it,  during  that  whole  evening 
neither  of  us  spoke  a  dozen  words,  but  his  first 
nod  of  greeting  seemed  to  make  the  room  as 
much  mine  as  his,  and  having  that  book  at  my 
disposal  I  wished  no  other  entertainment.  ^ 

After  that  there  were  many  such  evenings, 
and  what  with  the  short  conversations  we  did 
have,  and  our  getting  accustomed  to  being  m 
the  same  room  together,  we  grew  to  be  pretty 
good  friends.     At  one  time  and  another  I  told 
him  a  good  deal  about  my  life  out  West,  and 
the  failure  I'd  made  at  it,  and  about  my  plans 
for  trying  again,  and  he  seemed  to  like  to  get 
me  talking  about  it.    But  the  weeks  and  months 
went  by  without  his  volunteering  a  word  about 
his  studies,  or  his  plans,  or  the  workshop  that 
Archibald   had   alluded   to   so  disrespectfully. 
Often  he  would  excuse  himself,  and  then  some- 
times I  would  hear  the  whiz  of  machinery  or 
the  hammering  of  tools,  but  he  would  say  noth- 
38 


Roger   Drake 

ing  to  me  about  going  with  him,  and  I  figured 
that  when  he  wanted  me  he'd  say  so.  It  came 
about  at  last,  and  not  just  as  I'd  expected  it. 

We  had  been  talking  one  evening  about  my 
work.  I  was  finding  it  pretty  hard,  and  was 
wishing  I  could  be  out  in  the  open  again  for  a 
while,  when  he  turned  to  me  suddenly  and 
asked :  — 

"  What  are  you  doing  all  this  for,  anyway  ? 
I  mean,"  he  went  on,  seeing  I  didn't  under- 
stand him,  "  what  in  the  long  run  are  you 
doing  it  for  ?  " 

"In  the  long  run  ?  "  I  repeated.  "  Why,  to 
get  rich;  richer  than  Calaveras  telluride." 

"  Yes,"  he  said,  as  though  I  hadn't  answered 
his  question  yet,  "  but  what  are  you  planning 
to  do  with  it  when  you  get  it  ?  " 

I  laughed.  "  I  guess  I  won't  worry  about 
that  till  the  time  comes,"  said  I. 

"  And  you  don't  see  anything  at  all  ahead, 
but  just  that  ?  Just  the  pile  ?  " 

"  No,  and  I  don't  see  what  you're  driving  at 
either,"  I  answered.  "  What  do  you  see  ahead 
of  your  work? " 

His  eyes  seemed  to  light  up  on  the  thought 
of  it.  "  Why,  I  see,  to  begin  with,  the  poor 
people  taken  out  of  the  cities  and  into  the  fields  ; 
again,  I  see  the  workingman  earning  his  living, 

39 


Roger   Drake 

perhaps  in  his  home,  the  way  he  did  before  the 
age  of  steam,  instead  of  in  a  stuffy  factory,  as  he 
does  now.  I  see  the  farmer  growing  his  crops 
and  putting  a  little  money  in  the  bank  without 
making  slaves  of  himself  and  family.  That's 
part  of  what  I  see." 

"  How  do  you  mean  to  do  it? " 

"  By  electricity,"  he  said. 

I  really  thought  he  was  crazy,  and  my  face 
must  have  showed  it.  "  Oh,  I  know,"  said  he, 
impatiently  getting  to  his  feet,  "  but  come  along 
with  me,  and  see  whether  what  I'll  show  you  is 
insanity." 

I  followed  him  readily  enough,  up  into  his 
workshop.  There  was  nothing  in  it  that  is  not, 
by  now,  a  commonplace,  or  an  old-fashioned 
curiosity,  but  in  that  day  —  and  I  am  not  an 
old  man  yet  —  it  went  beyond  the  wildest  tales 
in  the  "  Arabian  Nights."  I  knew  something 
of  electricity  by  that  time,  but  what  I  saw  was 
as  incomprehensible  to  me  as  it  would  have 
been  to  Archibald.  There  was  a  dynamo  to 
begin  with,  something  that  I  had  never  heard 
of  before,  connected  up  to  a  small  horizontal 
engine. 

He  showed  me  more  than  I  could  possibly 
comprehend,  and  spent  half  the  night  explain- 
ing it  to  me.  He  showed  me  a  dynamo  that 
40 


Roger   Drake 

he  was  making  himself;  there  was  to  be  some 
improvement  in  the  way  the  armature  was 
wound,  and  I  noticed  the  coils  upon  coils  of 
copper  wire  that  went  into  it.  He  showed  me 
a  motor  —  how  it  was  just  like  a  dynamo,  only 
the  other  way  about —  and  how  it  could  be  run 
at  any  distance  from  the  dynamo  with  scarcely 
any  loss  of  power.  That  was  what  he  insisted 
on  most :  that  whereas  with  steam  you  must  use 
your  power  where  it  was  generated,  with  elec- 
tricity you  could  carry  your  power  anywhere, 
with  little  loss,  and  no  cost  except  for  the  wire. 
That  was  what  he  built  his  dream  on  for  regener- 
ating the  world. 

"  What  kind  of  wire  ?  "  I  asked. 

"  Copper,"  he  said.  "  Silver's  a  rather  better 
conductor,  but  that's  out  of  the  question." 

I  did  not  see  the  force  of  the  question  nor 
the  answer  then.  But  I  went  home  as  mad 
over  electricity  as  Fletcher  himself.  I  waked 
up  early  in  the  morning,  and  turned  it  all  over 
in  my  head.  The  revolution  was  coming ;  that 
was  sure  enough.  There  was  a  new  power 
which  would  turn  our  old  economy  topsy- 
turvy, whether  it  did  all  that  Fletcher  hoped 
it  would  or  not. 

I  began  wondering  how  it  would  affect 
me,  where  I  was  coming  in,  under  the  new 

4' 


Roger   Drake 

order  of  things.  And  then  suddenly  those 
coils  of  copper  wire  came  into  my  head,  and 
I  saw  the  whole  game  ahead  of  me.  I  began 
studying  copper  the  next  morning,  and  I  don't 
believe  I've  had  copper  out  of  my  head  for  a 
whole  day  since. 

I  have  been  getting  a  little  ahead  of  my 
story.  Not  all  the  evenings  of  those  months 
had  been  spent  in  Fletcher's  library.  He  used 
to  tell  me  that  the  thing  a  man  must  look  out 
for  was  getting  into  a  rut ;  that  in  order  to  live 
well,  a  fellow  must  round  his  life  out  and  see 
things  as  they  are.  Well,  I  found  it  pretty 
easy  to  convince  myself  that  the  way  to  round 
my  life  out  was  to  drop  in  every  few  days  at 
the  Stanleys',  as  they  (and  more  particularly, 
Adele  Broughton)  asked  me  to  do. 

I  didn't  think  I  was  in  love  with  her,  though 
the  sight  of  her  made  me  tingle  all  over  just  as 
it  had  that  first  evening ;  for,  often  as  I  saw  her, 
and  friendly  as  she  was,  I  had  the  feeling  that 
she  was  unattainable,  that  she  belonged  to 
another  world.  I  think  it  was  strengthened 

.  D 

by  a  conversation  we  had  when  I  called  a  little 
after  that  first  dinner. 

The  rest  of  them  were  all  out,  and  she  said 
coolly  as  you  please  that  she  was  glad  of  it,  for 
people  never  got  acquainted  until  they'd  had  a 
42 


J*' 

Roger   Drake 

chance  to  talk  all  by  themselves.  She  could 
say  things  like  that  not  coquettishly  at  all,  —  not 
at  all  in  a  forward  way,  —  in  a  way  that  belonged 
to  her  and  to  no  one  else. 

We  chatted  along  about  nothing  in  particular, 
and  at  last  she  said :  "  I  must  tell  you  a  joke 
that  Mr.  Stanley  played  on  me.  I  haven't  for- 
given him  yet.  He  made  me  think  that  you 
were  quite  a  different  sort  of  person,  a  sort  of 
cowboy,  that  George  had  picked  up  and  taken 
a  friendly  interest  in.  He  said  that  we  must 
try  to  put  you  at  your  ease,  and  all  that  sort 
of  thing.  He  carried  it  so  far  that  he  didn't 
dress  for  dinner  till  you  came ;  he  made  believe 
he  wanted  to  find  out  whether  you  came  in 
evening  clothes  before  he  put  on  his  own.  I 
came  down  expecting  to  find  some  wild,  woolly 
person  there,  and  when  I  saw  you,  —  well,  you 
can  imagine  how  I  felt." 

I  didn't  know  whether  she  was  talking 
in  good  faith,  or  just  to  find  out  from  the 
way  I  took  it,  what  class  I  did  belong  to. 
I  laughed  easily  enough,  and  said  that  where 
she  classified  me  must  depend  on  whether 
she  took  into  account  what  I'd  done,  or 
what  I  anticipated  doing;  and  said  that  if 
she'd  seen  me  crawling  back  into  town  after 
my  two  years  of  failure  in  the  gold  fields,  she'd 

43 


Roger   Drake 


think  that  Mr.  Stanley's  joke  was  a  pretty 
grim  reality. 

Something  in  the  way  she  spoke  of  this  un- 
couth person  whom  George  Stanley  had  inter- 
ested himself  in  did  more  to  keep  me  at  my 
distance  from  her  and  on  my  guard  than  all 
the  frank  friendliness  she  showed  me  could 
undo. 

But  I  liked  to  be  where  I  could  look  at  her 
and  talk  with  her,  and  many  and  many  an  hour 
I  spent  in  her  company.  And  afterward,  up  in 
Fletcher's  library,  we  would  talk  about  her  just 
as  we  had  in  our  first  talk  together.  Once,  after 
we  were  pretty  good  friends,  I  asked  if  he 
wouldn't  go  with  me  to  call  there  sometime. 
"  She's  heard  a  lot  about  you,"  said  I,  "  and 
she  wants  you  to  come." 

"  Look  here,"  said  he,  pointing  to  a  picture 
on  the  wall,  "  have  you  any  desire  to  look  at 
the  back  of  that  picture  ?  " 

"No,"  said  I. 

"  Or  to  know  the  model  ?  " 

"  No,"  I  responded. 

"Well,  neither  have  I,"  said  he,  and  with 
that  he  turned  back  to  his  draughting-table. 

"  I  think  you're  generally  fair-minded,"  said 
I,  "and  that's  why  I  can't  see  why  you're  so 
unfair  to  Miss  Broughton.  You  say  that  all 
44 


tf 

Roger   Drake 

she  is,  is  her  looks.  Well,  you've  never  done 
anything  but  look  at  her.  I  know  her  well, 
and  she's  shown  herself  a  good  friend  to  me. 
All  I  want  you  to  do  is  give  her  a  fair  chance, 
and  then  if  you  don't  like  her  —  " 

"  Are  you  in  love  with  her  ? "  he  cut  in. 

"  No." 

"  Well,  look  out  or  you  will  be." 

We  didn't  speak  of  her  again  for  a  long  time. 


45 


CHAPTER   III 

THE  two  years  and  more  that  I  spent  in  the 
city  slipped  away  so  fast  and  so  unevent- 
fully as  compared  with  former  times  that  it  is 
hard  for  me  to  remember  just  when  this  or  that 
event  happened.  I  think  I  got  along  with  what 
money  I  brought  East  with  me,  by  close  scrap- 
ing, for  nearly  a  year.  I  know  I  had  very  little 
left  and  was  on  the  point  of  looking  about  for 
a  job  when  Fletcher,  in  the  most  unexpected 
way,  settled  that  difficulty  for  me. 

We  were  both  reading  in  his  library  one 
evening,  when  he  said,  without  even  looking 
off  his  book  :  — 

"  Drake,  what  salary  would  you  take  to  act 
as  my  private  secretary  ?  " 

I  laughed  at  him.  "  Have  you  written  a  letter 
in  three  years  ?  "  I  asked,  "  or  do  you  expect  to 
write  one  in  the  next  three  ?  " 

"  No,"  he  said,  quite  seriously  and  truthfully, 
"  but  there  would  be  a  lot  of  other  things  for 
you  to  do." 

He  had  no  definite  idea  what  things    they 
were,  but  as  I  thought  it  over  I  decided  that  I 
46 


y  Roger   Drake 

could  really  be  pretty  useful  to  him,  so  I  said 
I  would  do  it.  Of  course  it  was  a  great  thing 
for  me.  I  had  the  use  of  his  library,  laboratories, 
workshop,  everything,  and  as  he  insisted  on 
paying  me  a  salary  besides  my  keep,  I  was  very 
comfortably  off  indeed.  I  tried  my  best  to 
make  it  good  to  him,  and  I  think  I  succeeded. 
I  couldn't  repay  his  kindness,  at  least  not  then, 
but  I  think  I  was  worth  to  him  all  he  paid  me. 
The  snug  little  property  he  had  at  that  time, 
all  salted  down  as  it  was  in  bonds,  was  a  great 
burden  to  him.  In  fact,  he  has  always  hated 
money  (that  is,  the  thing  itself;  he  liked  and 
needed  the  result  of  a  good  deal  of  it),  so  I  re- 
lieved him  of  all  care  on  that  score.  Then  I 
got  a  servant,  and  between  us  we  made  him  a 
good  deal  more  comfortable  than  he  usually  was, 
though  I  doubt  if  he  were  aware  of  it.  The 

o 

biggest  help  I  could  give  him  was  in  his  work. 
I  kept  everything  in  order,  —  that  is,  the  kind 
of  order  he  wanted  it  in,  —  and  I  did  a  great 
deal  of  his  routine  mathematical  work  for  him. 
That,  by  the  way,  was  as  good  for  me  as  it 
was  for  him,  or  better. 

I  should  like  to  ramble  along,  telling  about 
how  we  lived  together  and  all  we  did  and  talked 
about.  I  wish  he  were  to  be  more  in  these 
pages,  for  the  thought  of  him,  as  well  as  being 

47 


Roger   Drake 

in  his  company,  always  leaves  what  seems  like 
a  pleasant  odor  in  my  mind.  If  I  am  worth 
anything,  besides  what  you  can  represent  be- 
tween a  dollar  sign  and  a  decimal  point,  it  comes 
mostly  from  him  and  one  other. 

But  I  am  telling  my  story,  not  his,  and  for 
that  next  year  it  deals  more  with  Adele 
Broughton  than  with  him.  It  was  a  few  months 
after  I  went  to  live  with  Fletcher,  and  just  a 
little  before  Christmas,  that  I  had  the  talk  with 
her  which  put  us  on  a  different  footing  from 
the  one  I  had  kept  up  to  that  time. 

I  told  her,  I  remember,  that  I  was  trying  to 
think  of  something  to  give  Fletcher  for  Christ- 
mas. "  If  I  could  give  him  a  really  new  idea 
about  something,"  said  I,  "  it  would  be  just  the 
thing,  but  I  get  all  mine  from  him.  And  the 
only  material  thing  I  can  think  of  that  he'd 
like  is  a  good  portrait  of  you.  But  I'm  afraid 
that  you  won't  help  me  out." 

"  I  don't  know  whether  you  expect  me  to  feel 
complimented  or  not,  but  I  don't,"  she  said. 
"  And  I  think  the  way  Mr.  Fletcher  treats  me 
is  very  insulting." 

She  said  it  so  easily,  and  with  so  little  warmth, 
that  I  didn't  know  she  was  serious,  so  I  laughed 
and  replied  that  insults  like  that  generally  went 
by  another  name. 

48 


y  Roger   Drake 

"  I  don't  wonder  that  you're  amused,"  she 
said,  "and  I've  no  doubt  he  will  be  when  you 
tell  him." 

Then  I  saw  that  she  meant  it.  "  Fletcher  is 
a.  great  admirer  of  yours.  I  don't  know  what 
has  given  you  the  impression  that  he  has  in- 
sulted you." 

"  Why,  I  get  the  impression,  as  you  say,  from 
you  and  Mr.  Archibald.  If  he  admires  me,  he 
does  it  in  the  same  way  that  he  would  admire  a 
doll  or  a  chromo.  That's  the  way  men  look  at 
women,  anyway,  but  most  of  them  don't  make 
an  open  show  of  it,  and  that's  why  I  say  that  he's 
insulting." 

It  had  never  occurred  to  me  before  that  she 
was  anything  but  pleased  by  Fletcher's  admi- 
ration, let  alone  that  she  resented  it.  I  thought 
it  over  a  little  before  I  answered  her. 

"  I  don't  think  you  look  at  it  just  right. 
Fletcher  admires  all  he  knows  of  you  im- 
mensely, and  I  don't  blame  him  for  that. 
But  I  do  wish  that  he  knew  you  better,  and 
I've  told  him  so.  And  I  think  that  he  isn't 
quite  fair  to  you,  and  I've  told  him  that,  too." 

She  laughed  aloud,  something  she  seldom  did, 

and  something  that  I  didn't  like  to  hear  her  do, 

for  her  laugh  was  hard.    "  You're  a  strange  one 

to  be  remonstrating  with  Mr.  Fletcher,"  she 

E  49 


Roger   Drake 

said.     "You    treat   me  just   as    badly   as    he 

does." 

If  I'd  been  surprised  before,  I  was  regularly 
ambushed  then.  At  last  I  said,  as  stiff  as 
possible :  — 

"  If  you  really  mean  that,  Miss  Broughton, 
will  you  tell  me  just  what  I've  done  that  offends 

5 » 

you  r 

I  can  see  her  now,  just  as  she  looked  when 
she  answered  me.  She  sat  exactly  facing  me, 
leaning  back  in  an  easy-chair,  —  that  wasn't  the 
way  most  girls  sat  in  those  days,  —  her  eyes  just 
open  enough  so  that  she  could  see  me  under 
her  lashes,  and  I  can  hear  her  even  voice. 

"  You've  known  me  for  more  than  a  year, 
Mr.  Drake,  and  I  think  you  ought  to  know 
that  you're  one  of  my  friends.  —  No,  let  me  go 
on.  But  you've  never  made  me  one  of  your 
friends.  You've  never  talked  to  me  ten  minutes 
as  you  talk  by  the  hour  to  Mr.  Fletcher  or  to 
Mr.  —  to  George  Stanley.  I  forget  that  he's  a 
cousin,  for  I've  never  seen  him.  You  come  here 
and  talk  to  me  about  nothing  much,  —  that's  all 
you  think  I'm  interested  in,  —  and  when  you're 
tired  of  me  you  go  away.  You  never  tell  me 
a  word  about  your  plans,  or  your  ambitions,  or 
anything." 

I  let  that  go  unanswered  for  a  long  while, 
5° 


^  Roger   Drake 

and  all  the  while  she  waited,  sitting  quite  still, 
and  looking  at  me  as  steadily  as  I  was  looking 
at  her.  I  had  some  jest  or  other  at  the  end  of 
my  tongue,  but  I  couldn't  say  it.  When  I  did 
speak,  I  said  something  else,  and  when  I  remem- 
ber how  beautiful  she  was,  I  don't  wonder  that 
I  answered  as  I  did. 

"  I've  always  thought  you  let  me  come  to  see 
you  as  much  as  I  have,  because  I  gave  you  a 
little  entertainment.  I  never  thought  that  my 
personal  concerns,  unless  they  were  amusing  in 
themselves,  had  any  interest  for  you ;  just  be- 
cause they  were  mine,  I  mean.  Do  you  care 
anything  about  my  ambitions  and  my  plans  ? 
Do  you  care  anything,  even  a  very  little,  about 
me,  myself? "  I  didn't  ask  it  very  steadily. 

"You  aren't  very  kind,  or  very  observant 
either,  to  ask  a  question  like  that,"  she  said. 
And  then  in  an  instant,  before  I  even  could 
realize  what  she'd  said,  she  changed  her  attitude 
in  the  chair,  and  began  telling  some  amusing 
experience  of  the  night  before. 

When  I  went  home  that  night  I  went  straight 
to  bed,  because  for  some  reason  or  other  I  didn't 
feel  like  talking  to  Fletcher.  What  I  wonder 
at  now,  as  I  think  it  over,  is  that  she  didn't  en- 
tirely convince  me.  I  lay  awake  all  that  night 
trying  to  decide  about  her ;  whether  I  was  really 


Roger   Drake 

in  love  with  her,  whether  I  even  liked  her, 
whether,  perhaps,  Fletcher  wasn't  right  after 
all.  What  troubled  me  most,  was  to  find  a 
reason  for  doubting  her.  She  had  seen  me 
without  money,  without  position  or  influence 
or  name,  or  any  of  the  personal  qualities  that 
attract  a  girl ;  she  had,  as  she  had  said  to  me 
that  night,  been  my  friend  from  the  first. 
Look  at  it  as  I  might,  I  could  not  twist  her 
motives  into  anything  selfish  ;  I  could  see  noth- 
ing in  it  but  pure  kindness  of  heart.  Yet  when 
I  had  reasoned  as  far  as  that,  I  would  turn  over 
and  begin  again,  and  the  distrust  wasn't  shaken 
in  the  least.  At  last  along  early  in  the  morn- 
ing, I  made  up  my  mind  that  I  was  only  con- 
fusing matters,  so  I  got  up  and  dressed  and 
went  to  work  on  copper.  There  is  no  nonsense 
about  copper. 

But  the  next  evening  I  went  over  to  the 
Stanleys'  again.  The  butler  said  that  Miss 
Stanley  and  Archibald  were  in  the  drawing- 
room,  and  that  the  rest  of  the  family,  Mr. 
and  Mrs.  Stanley  and  Adele,  were  up  in  the 
library,  so  I  went  up  there.  They  were  talk- 
ing about  George. 

For  the  first  year  after  I  came  back  East  we 
had  all  heard  from  him  as  regularly  as  could 
be  expected,  considering  where  he  was  ;  hardly 
52 


Roger   Drake 

once  had  a  month  gone  by  without  our  having 
letters.  But  at  this  time  I  think  it  must  have 
been  six  months  since  they  had  heard  a  word 
of  him.  At  first  nobody  had  as  much  as 
hinted  that  there  was  anything  to  be  alarmed 
about,  but  as  the  time  wore  on,  all  of  them  but 
old  Mr.  Stanley  began  to  show  in  one  way  or 
another  how  their  anxiety  was  deepening  into 
something  pretty  close  to  despair.  But  at  last, 
on  this  very  day  I  am  talking  about,  the  letter 
came.  During  the  dark  days  they  had  men- 
tioned his  name  but  seldom,  but  when  I  came 
in,  they  seemed  to  be  trying  to  make  up  for  it 
all  in  one  evening ;  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Stanley  did, 
I  mean.  Adele  hardly  joined  at  all  in  the  talk. 

They  gave  me  the  letter  to  read,  and  then 
made  me  explain  all  the  gold-hunter's  slang 
that  was  sprinkled  along  its  pages,  and,  after 
that,  made  me  tell  them  all  I  knew  about  every 
place  he  mentioned.  If  I  had  never  been  there, 
they  had  me  describe  some  other  place  that 
might  be  something  like  it.  The  letter  itself 
was  vague ;  a  man  never  likes  to  go  much  into 
detail  about  a  failure  till  after  he  has  made  a 
success  that  more  than  balances  it.  But  he 
didn't  seem  to  be  discouraged,  and  he  said 
nothing  at  all  about  coming  home. 

Somewhere  about  eleven  o'clock,  when  they 
53 


Roger   Drake 

had  told  about  him  from  his  infancy  up,  and  I 
had  repeated  all  my  Wild  West  stories,  I  said 
good  night,  and  started  down  the  stairs.  Adele 
overtook  me  before  I  had  gone  far,  and  said 
she  wanted  to  speak  to  me.  On  the  second 
floor  there  was  a  sort  of  divan  in  place  of  the 
regular  hall  bedroom,  and  there  we  sat  down 
together. 

We  were  both  silent  for  a  minute,  and  then 
her  presence  there,  so  near,  overcame  me. 
"  Adele,"  said  I,  "  you  didn't  answer  the  ques- 
tions I  asked  you  last  night.  You  didn't  tell 
me  whether  —  " 

"  Let  me  talk  first,"  she  interrupted.  cc  It's 
about  last  night  that  I  wanted  to  speak  to  you. 
I  was  silly  to  say  what  I  did.  I  don't  want 
you  to  remember  it." 

"  Do  you  take  it  back,  Adele  ?  or  do  you 
mean  that  you're  sorry  I  know  ?  " 

"  Don't !  "  she  exclaimed.  "  That's  just 
what  I  don't  want  you  to  think.  I  don't  take 
it  back.  I  meant  just  what  I  said,  but  I  didn't 
mean  anything  —  anything  at  all  —  more  than 
I  said.  And  I'm  sorry  I  said  as  much  as  I 
did,  because  I  see  that  you  misunderstood  it." 

It  seemed  as  impossible  that  her  even  voice 
could  contain  any  echo  of  the  passion  that  was 
in   mine   as   that  the  color  should  come  into 
54 


Roger   Drake 

the  cheeks  of  a  marble  statue.     I  did  not  try 
to  speak,  so  she  went  on  :  — 

"  I'd  wanted  you  to  be  one  of  my  friends 
ever  since  I  first  met  you,  and  it  seemed  as 
though  you  were  no  nearer  it  last  night  than 
you  were  before  you  ever  saw  me,  and  I  was 
too  frank  in  telling  you.  But  I  don't  mean  to 
take  it  back  ;  only  you  mustn't  misunderstand." 

"  I'm  sorry,  Miss  Broughton,  that  I  was 
such  an  idiot,"  said  I,  getting  to  my  feet.  "  I 
beg  your  pardon." 

"  And  I  didn't  mean  just  now,"  she  went 
on,  without  rising,  "  that  you  mustn't  call  me 
Adele.  I'd  like  you  to  do  that." 

"  Good  night,"  said  I,  and  I  didn't  dare  take 
her  hand  as  she  held  it  out  to  me. 

I  suppose  that  during  the  first  year,  when  I 
fancied  myself  so  secure,  a  sort  of  undermining 
process  must  have  gone  on  beneath  me,  or  I 
should  not  have  been  so  easily  shaken.  As  it 
was,  for  the  next  few  days  I  was  quite  worth- 
less. Even  copper  failed  to  put  me  on  my  feet 
again,  and  the  mess  I  made  of  the  long  mathe- 
matical calculations  I  tried  to  carry  out  for 
Fletcher  may  easily  be  imagined. 

He  bore  it  very  patiently  for  several  days, 
but  at  last,  on  Christmas  eve,  I  remember,  he 
asked  me  what  was  the  matter  with  me. 

55 


Roger   Drake 

He  was  as  good  a  friend  as  I  had,  and  the 
best  confidant,  but  he  was  the  last  man  on 
earth  to  whom  I  could  have  confessed  that  I 
was  near  falling  in  love  with  Adele  Broughton. 
So  I  answered  that  something  was  wrong  with 
my  nervous  system. 

He  pondered  over  that  awhile,  and  at  last 
he  said :  "  I  believe  you're  a  little  bit  stale 
over  this  theoretical  work.  If  I  were  you,  I'd 
go  in  for  the  practical  side  of  it.  Take  an  old 
suit  of  clothes  and  a  pick  and  get  a  job  in  some 
big  copper  mine  out  West.  Let  the  books  go 
for  six  months,  and  just  keep  your  eyes  open 
and  see  how  they  do  it.  And  forget  every- 
thing else.  Forget  that  you  have  any  nerves. 
A  man  of  your  age  and  temperament  has  no 
business  with  any.  And  if  I  were  you,  I'd 
start  at  once." 

I  more  than  guessed  that  he  understood 
what  my  complaint  really  was,  but  I  didn't 
mind  that,  for  the  fiction  saved  us  from  talk- 
ing about  it.  I  didn't  take  much  more  than 
a  minute  to  think  over  his  advice,  and  then 
I  said  I'd  start  the  day  after  to-morrow. 

"  Why  not  to-morrow  ?  "  he  asked. 

"To-morrow  is  Christmas,"  I  answered. 

"  I  know  it  is,"  said  he. 

I   understood  what   he  meant  well  enough, 

to    " 
56 


Roger   Drake 

but  I  was  too  proud  to  run  away.  I  said  to 
myself  that  I  wasn't  afraid  of  one  more  meet- 
ing with  her. 

But  I  was  afraid,  and  not  all  the  bravado  I 
could  muster  could  deceive  me.  I  was  a  good 
deal  relieved  when,  on  walking  into  the  Stan- 
leys' drawing-room  Christmas  afternoon,  I  found 
the  whole  family  there  together,  and  a  couple 
of  other  callers  besides.  I  took  my  part  in 
the  talk,  and  should  have  thought  I  was  be- 
having quite  naturally  if  Adele  had  not  kept 
her  eye  on  me  in  a  way  that  showed  she  knew 
I  had  something  extraordinary  to  announce. 
So  as  soon  as  the  other  visitors  were  gone,  I 
got  up  and  said  that  I  must  say  good-by,  as  I 
was  going  away. 

"  How  long  shall  you  be  gone  ?  "  Mr.  Stan- 
ley asked,  with  a  smile.  "  Till  this  evening, 
perhaps  ?  or  is  it  until  to-morrow  ?  " 

Adele  laughed,  and  started  to  say  something, 
but  I  went  ahead. 

"  No,"  said  I,  "  I  expect  to  be  gone  about 
six  months." 

I  saw  a  flash  of  surprise  go  over  her  face, 
and  then  she  turned  away  toward  the  window. 
A  moment  later,  while  all  the  others  were  ex- 
claiming and  questioning  at  once,  she  slipped 
out  of  the  room. 

57 


Roger   Drake 

I  answered  those  questions  as  well  as  I  could, 
which  wasn't  very  well,  as  I  had  no  plans  at 
all,  except  to  try  to  get  some  experience  in 
mining  and  smelting  copper  and  to  start  West 
early  next  morning.  But  I  promised  to  send 
them  my  address  as  soon  as  I  had  one,  so  that 
if  George  came  back  before  I  did,  they  could 
send  for  me.  I  shook  hands  all  round,  and 
said  good-by  to  everybody,  and  then  looked 
about  for  Adele.  She  didn't  come,  and  I  went 
the  rounds  again,  and  then,  after  standing  help- 
lessly for  a  minute  without  another  word  to 
say,  I  told  them  to  say  good-by  to  Adele  for 
me,  and  that  I'd  write  her  a  note  if  I  shouldn't 
be  able  to  see  her  again. 

And  then  I  heard  her  step  on  the  stairs. 
You  may  think  I  had  a  choice ;  that  I  could 
have  waited  in  the  drawing-room  for  her  to 
come  in,  and  could  have  parted  from  her  there 
before  them  all.  That  is  what  I  wanted  to 
do,  but  what  I  did  was  to  say  another  good-by 
to  them,  and  then  go  into  the  hall  in  time  to 
meet  her  at  the  foot  of  the  stairs. 

"  I'd  be  glad  you  were  going,  if  I  weren't  so 
selfish,"  she  said,  as  she  held  out  her  hand  to 
me.  She  did  not  withdraw  it  while  she  stood 
there,  and  I  could  not  have  let  it  go.  "  I  think 
it  will  be  a  splendid  thing  for  you,  but  I  don't 
58 


Roger   Drake 

like  to  let  a  friend  go  away.  I  shall  miss  you 
very  much." 

Then  she  thanked  me  for  some  roses  I  had 
sent  her,  and  as  I  was  turning  to  go,  quickly 
thrust  an  envelope  into  my  hand.  "Merry 
Christmas,"  she  whispered. 

The  envelope  was  sealed,  and  I  did  not  take 
it  from  my  pocket  to  open  it  till  I  was  in  my 
room.  When  I  had  struck  a  light,  I  saw  writ- 
ten across  the  face  of  it  in  her  long,  pointed 
characters :  — 

"You  may  leave  this  with  Mr.  Fletcher  if 
you  like." 

I  knew  then  what  was  inside,  and  I  thought 
perhaps  it  would  be  safer  to  wait  until  I  was 
some  hundreds  of  miles  away  before  I  looked 
at  it.  If  I  remember  right,  I  was  a  twenty- 
four  hours'  ride  away  from  her  when  I  opened 
the  envelope.  It  contained  a  little  oval  photo- 
graph of  her,  done  on  a  bit  of  ivory.  I  was 
going  out  West  to  forget  her,  and  I  knew  that 
the  best  thing  I  could  do  would  be  to  flick  that 
bit  of  ivory  out  of  the  window.  I  thought 
about  it  a  long  while,  but  at  last  I  put  it  back 
in  my  pocket. 

I  did  my  best  in  those  next  six  months  to 
follow  Fletcher's  advice ;  that  is,  the  part  of  it 
he  had  left  unsaid.  Sometimes  I  thought  I 

59 


Roger   Drake 

had  succeeded,  that  I  could  go  back  and  shake 
hands  with  Adele  Broughton  as  coolly  as  with 
Miss  Stanley.  But  at  other  times  I  would  see 
her  as  she  faced  me,  in  the  big  easy-chair,  ask- 
ing me,  in  that  quiet,  level  voice  of  hers,  a  voice 
that  might  have  in  it  all  that  I  sometimes 
imagined  it  had,  to  be  her  friend.  And  then 
I  would  be  glad  I  was  working  a  hand-drill 
twelve  hundred  feet  under  ground. 

I  did  better  at  following  the  other  part  of 
Fletcher's  advice,  —  to  go  in  and  get  a  good 
practical  knowledge  of  copper.  I  worked 
under  ground  for  three  months  and  learned 
more  about  the  practical  timbering  of  a  mine 
than  I  could  have  found  out  in  twice  the  time 
at  school.  They  had  an  accident  in  which  five 
or  six  men  were  killed,  while  I  was  there.  It 
was  in  another  working  from  where  I  was,  so 
I  lived  and  learned  a  little  about  how  not  to  do 
it.  At  the  end  of  the  three  months  I  came  up 
and  worked  around  for  a  few  weeks  in  the  cal- 
cining works,  and  picked  up  a  good  deal  of 
practical  information  about  the  first  steps  in 
the  production  of  pure  metallic  copper.  I  think 
perhaps  I  asked  too  many  questions  and  did 
too  little  of  the  lifting  and  hauling  that  I  was 
hired  to  do,  for  it  wasn't  very  long  before  I 
was  laid  off. 

60 


Roger   Drake 

Then  I  got  a  job  with  a  surveying  party  for 
a  railroad  which  was  coming  up  that  way,  and 
you  can  imagine  what  a  relief  it  was  after  hav- 
ing worked  a  quarter  of  a  year  down  in  the 
dark,  and  then  up  in  the  horrible  sulphur 
stench  that  surrounds  a  smelting  plant,  to  be 
out  in  the  sweet  spring  air  tramping  through 
the  woods  by  day  and  sleeping,  as  I  was  veteran 
enough  to  do,  on  the  lee  side  of  a  camp-fire 
at  night. 

At  first  I  was  just  a  chainman  and  that  left 
me  lots  of  leisure  to  keep  my  eyes  open  on  my 
own  account.  I  had  a  field  geology  with  me, 
and  I  tried  to  make  every  rock  and  crack  I  saw 
tell  me  its  story.  Two  or  three  places  we 
came  to  made  me  wish  I  had  a  prospector's 
drill,  for  the  surface  showed  some  signs  of 
copper.  It  wasn't  long,  though,  before  I  was 
promoted,  and  after  that  I  didn't  have  much 
time  for  prospecting. 

In  one  way  the  experience  was  good  for  me ; 
it  made  another  step  toward  the  complete  equip- 
ment I  needed.  But  in  another  way  I  lost  a 
good  deal  of  the  good  I  had  gained  working  in 
the  mine.  There  wasn't  much  in  those  dark 
stuffy  chambers  under  ground,  or  in  the  rat- 
tling of  ore,  and  the  roar  of  furnaces,  to  make 
me  think  about  Adele  Broughton.  But  out 

61 


Roger   Drake 

here  she  came  back  into  my  thoughts  again. 
At  first,  thinking  there  was  no  more  danger,  I  let 
my  mind  dwell  on  her,  just  for  the  luxury  of  it, 
as  I  had  seen  her,  here  or  there.  And  then  I 
got  to  bringing  her  out  to  me,  and  I  used  to 
fancy  I  saw  her  coming  toward  me  whenever 
a  vista  opened  up  before  me  through  the  trees. 
I  never  saw  a  spray  of  blossoms  on  some  wild 
vine,  but  I  imagined  it  a  wreath  in  her  hair. 
And  so,  before  I  knew  it,  the  old  longing  and 
the  doubt  and  the  trouble  were  back  upon  me 
again. 

I  kept  up  the  battle  with  myself  for  a  while, 
but  at  last  I  decided  that  there  was  no  use  in 
trying  any  longer  to  conquer  in  that  way.  I 
would  go  back  to  her  —  I  would  make  her  tell 
me  the  truth.  I  had  found  out  already,  I  said 
to  myself,  that  I  loved  her.  So  I  went  to  the 
head  of  our  party  and  told  him  that  when  we 
came  to  the  next  large  town  we  were  nearing, 
I  meant  to  leave  him. 

During  those  next  few  days  I  became  most 
impatient  to  get  on.  The  last  shred  of  doubt 
of  my  feeling  toward  her  disappeared,  and  I 
was  counting  up  the  hours  till  I  could  see  her, 
and  wondering  if  I  had  not  already  lost  her  by 
the  delay. 

But  we  got  to  the  town  at  last,  and  fortu- 
62 


Roger   Drake 

nately  for  me  and  my  companions  as  well,  I  did 
not  have  to  wait  long  for  a  train.  The  feverish 
impatience  was  growing  worse  as  the  hours 
which  separated  me  from  her  grew  fewer  until  I 
fairly  lost  control  of  myself.  Every  stop  the 
train  made  irritated  me,  and  when  we  fell  sev- 
eral hours  behind  our  running  schedule,  as  trains 
almost  always  did  in  those  days,  I  took  it  as  a 
personal  injury.  I  tried  not  to  think  of  her, 
but  I  might  as  well  have  tried  not  to  breathe, 
and  I  kept  torturing  myself  with  the  dwelling 
upon  the  happiness  that  might  be  in  store  for 
me.  Perhaps  Adele  Broughton  would  some 
day  be  my  wife,  would  belong  to  me  and  to  me 
all  alone  ;  perhaps,  when  we  had  established  our 
mine,  she  would  come  out  with  me,  and  then, 
after  the  long  day  under  ground  or  among  the 
furnaces  I  should  come  home  and  find  her  wait- 
ing for  me,  looking  just  as  she  had  looked  that 
evening  in  the  easy-chair. 

My  journey  came  to  an  end  at  last  at  nine 
o'clock  in  the  evening,  and  I  caught  a  cabman 
and  giving  him  the  Stanleys'  address,  told  him 
to  drive  fast.  I  suppose  he  thought  some  one 
must  be  at  the  point  of  death,  for  we  went  all 
the  way  at  a  gallop. 

The  same  big  darky  who  had  been  their 
butler  for  a  good  many  years  let  me  in,  and 

63 


Roger  Drake 

mistook  me  at  first  glance  for  George  Stanley. 
I  thought  nothing  of  it  at  the  moment,  but 
asked  him  if  Miss  Broughton  was  at  home. 
He  began  a  long  explanation,  that  an  entertain- 
ment was  going  on,  charades  or  tableaux  I 
guessed  from  his  description,  and  that  the 
whole  family  were  there.  Miss  Adele,  he 
added,  was  taking  part,  dressed  up  like  a 
queen,  and  covered  all  over  with  spangles. 
Then  he  said  that  Mr.  George  was  expected 
home  to-morrow,  and  that  was  why  he  had 
mistaken  me  for  him. 

But  not  even  George  Stanley  could  turn  the 
current  of  my  thoughts  away  from  Adele.  I 
asked  the  man  more  particularly  about  the 
entertainment,  and  he  could  inform  me,  for  he 
had  been  helping  prepare  for  it  in  a  hall  not 
many  squares  away. 

He  said,  in  answer  to  another  question,  that 
there  was  a  way  of  getting  to  the  stage  without 
going  through  the  audience. 

I  had  in  mind  going  up  into  the  wings  and 
seeing  her  there,  but  I  thought  of  something 
better.  I  wrote  across  one  of  my  visiting-cards 
just  the  question,  "  Shall  you  be  getting  home 
a  little  ahead  of  the  others  ? "  and  gave  it  to 
the  man  to  deliver  to  her  for  me.  He  came 
back  in  half  an  hour,  with  the  same  card.  She 
64 


Roger   Drake 

had  written  "  Yes  "  upon  it.  I  told  the  man 
that  I  would  stay  up  and  wait  for  the  family, 
and  that  he  could  go  to  bed.  For  another 
half  hour  I  counted  the  seconds  as  they  were 
ticked  off  by  the  hall  clock,  and  then  at  last  I 
heard  the  wheels  of  her  carriage. 

She  did  not  see  that  it  was  I  who  had 
opened  the  door  until  she  had  passed  by  me 
and  I  had  closed  it  after  her.  She  drew  in  her 
breath  in  a  little  gasp  of  surprise  at  sight  of  me, 
and  then  stood  silently,  letting  me  look  at  her. 

"  What  do  you  think  of  the  Faery  Queen  ?  " 
she  asked,  after  a  moment. 

I  could  not  answer,  but  only  repeat  her 
name,  "  Adele  —  Adele  —  Adele."  She  was 
clad  in  a  trailing  gown  of  gray,  and  the  light 
shimmered  from  it,  and  sparkled  from  the 
hundreds  of  little  silver  spangles  which  were 
caught  in  the  white  net  that  covered  it.  She 
wore  a  star  set  with  diamonds  on  her  forehead 
and  carried  a  long  white  wand  in  her  hand. 

"  I  am  glad  you've  come  back,"  she  said. 
"  We  missed  you  very  much.  You  must  tell 
me  all  you  did  while  you  were  away  —  every- 
thing." 

"  That  is  not  what  I  have  come  back  to  tell 
you,  Adele,"  I  said  slowly. 

"  Come  in  here  to  tell  me." 

F  65 


Roger   Drake 

As  she  led  the  way  into  the  drawing-room, 
her  eyes  fell  on  a  strange  old  chair,  which 
had  stood  for  years  in  the  hall.  It  was 
high,  straight-backed,  curiously  carved.  "  The 
queen  must  have  her  throne,"  she  said. 

I  carried  it  into  the  drawing-room  and  set 
it  in  the  bay  where  the  floor  was  a  low  step 
higher  than  in  the  room  itself.  When  she  was 
seated,  very  erect,  and  with  the  wand  upright 
in  her  hand, — 

"  Now  I  will  hear  what  you  have  come  to 
tell,"  she  said. 

I  stood  before  her  with  bent  head,  for  look- 
ing at  her  I  could  do  nothing  but  look,  and 
told  her  the  story.  I  began  with  the  time 
when  she  appeared  to  me  as  a  vision  framed 
in  the  doorway.  I  told  her  what  a  creature 
from  another  world  she  was,  and  how  the 
thought  that  I  could  ever  be  of  personal  con- 
cern to  her  was  one  I  had  never  dared  to 
think  until  that  day  she  had  asked  me  to  be 
her  friend.  I  told  how  still  I  had  not  dared 
to  believe  her,  had  struggled,  and  gone  away 
to  forget  her,  only  to  find  that  I  could  not 
forget.  "And  now,"  said  I,  "  I  have  come 
back  to  ask  you  to  tell  me  the  truth.  If  you 
do  not  care  for  me,  I  will  go  away  and  live  my 
life  as  I  have  meant  to  live  it,  and  perhaps 
66 


ALL  I  COULD  SAY  WAS,  <  ADELE  !   ADELE  !   ADELE  ! '  '' 


Roger   Drake 

some  day  I  shall  be  as  I  was  before  I  ever 
saw  you.  But  if  you  do  care  —  Do  you  care, 
Adele  ?  Do  you  care  ?  " 

She  did  not  answer  at  once.  "  I  don't  quite 
know,"  she  said  at  last.  Then  she  smiled. 
"  But  I  almost  know.  I  will  tell  you  pretty 
soon.  I  will  tell  you  within  a  week." 

This  time  I  could  look  at  her  while  I  spoke. 
"  Adele,"  said  I,  "  I  shall  take  my  answer  to- 
night. Whether  you  answer  me  in  words  or 
not,  I  shall  be  answered.  You  knew  what 
sent  me  away  from  you  six  months  ago,  and 
you  know  what  has  brought  me  back.  You 
know  the  true  answers  to  my  questions,  and 
you  must  answer  them." 

This  time  it  was  her  eyes  that  fell.  But 
they  rose  again  to  my  face  immediately. 
"  Kneel  down,"  she  said. 

I  dropped  on  my  knees  before  her,  and  then 
I  felt  her  wand  strike  my  shoulder,  but  I 
waited  for  her  to  speak.  I  heard  her  draw  a 
long,  trembling  breath,  and  then,  with  a  little 
laugh,  — 

"  Why  don't  you  kiss  me  ?  "  she  said. 

I  kissed  her,  kissed  her  a  score  of  times,  but 
I  wanted  her  to  tell  me  in  words.  "  Is  it  true, 
Adele?"  I  asked.  "Are  they  true?  Are 
they  mine,  and  always  mine  ?  " 

67 


Roger   Drake 

She  laughed  and  pushed  me  back  from  her. 
"  Of  course,"  she  said. 

There  was  just  then  a  vigorous  ring  at  the 
door-bell,  and  she  motioned  me  to  answer  it. 
When  I  swung  the  door  open,  there  stood 
George  Stanley  before  me. 

"  Come  in,"  said  I,  heedless  of  his  surprise 
that  I  should  be  there.  As  he  stepped  into 
the  hall  and  I  looked  at  him  while  we  shook 
hands,  and  as  I  noticed  again  how  tall  and 
clean-limbed  he  was,  and  what  likable  gray 
eyes  he  had,  I  felt  what  you  may  call,  if 
you  like,  a  premonition ;  something,  at  least, 
besides  the  feeling  that  it  was  good  to  see  him 
again. 

"Come  in,"  said  I  again.  "There's  some 
one  else  here  for  you  to  see." 

Then  as  we  entered  the  drawing-room,  "This 
is  my  —  " 

"  I'm  not  going  to  be  introduced  to  my 
cousin  George  Stanley,"  said  Adele.  "  I  know 
you  already.  I've  kept  Mr.  Drake  talking  to 
me  about  you  for  two  years." 

I  can  remember  very  well  the  expressions 
that  crossed  his  face  as  he  looked  at  her. 
Pure  amazement  at  first,  and  then  another  look 
which  I  cannot  describe,  a  look  which  tor- 
mented me  many  a  time  in  the  next  few 
68 


Roger   Drake 

months.  But  in  turn  it  was  gone  in  a  mo- 
ment, and  he  smiled  gayly  and  shook  hands 
with  her,  and  with  me  again ;  and  while  we 
were  still  standing  there,  the  others  came  home 
from  the  charades. 


69 


CHAPTER   IV 

IT  was  a  little  while  before  the  amazing 
nature  of  the  coincidence  occurred  to  us, 
for  at  first  our  bare  surprise  at  seeing  each 
other  kept  us  from  ruminating  on  the  relations 
of  things,  but  we  did  justice  to  it  later  in  the 
evening. 

Well,  exclamations  gave  place  at  last  to 
questions,  and  questions  to  answers,  and  it  was 
long  past  midnight  before  we  knew  it.  When, 
at  last,  I  picked  up  my  bag  and  was  about  to 
start  over  to  Fletcher's,  they  all  protested  that 
it  was  too  late  to  think  of  going  out  again  that 
night,  so,  gladly  enough,  I  stayed.  I  hoped 
in  some  way  to  secure  another  moment  with 
Adele,  for  I  had  not  had  a  chance  to  speak  to 
her  since  George's  ring  at  the  door-bell.  She 
seemed  as  anxious  for  that  moment  as  I  was, 
but  it  didn't  come,  so  when  the  party  broke  up, 
we  nodded  a  good  night  to  each  other  just  as 
though  nothing  had  happened. 

My  room  was  next  to  Stanley's,  and  before 
I  was  half  undressed  he  came  shuffling  in  and 
sat  down  on  my  bed. 

70 


Roger  Drake 

"  Luxurious  chaps,  these  city  fellows  are,"  he 
said,  patting  the  coverlet.  "  You're  really  one 
of  them,  for  you  haven't  been  roughing  it  long 
enough  to  forget  how  a  bed  feels.  But  I 
haven't  slept  in  anything  like  this  for  three 
years  and  more." 

"  I  know  what's  ahead  of  you,  though," 
said  I.  "I  was  out  about  that  length  of  time 
once  myself." 

"  But  you  didn't  make  the  change  so  glori- 
ously abrupt.  You  had  some  of  the  comforts 
of  a  home  in  that  little  room  back  of  the  bar- 
ber shop,  I  remember.  I  was  sleeping  in  a 
tent  two  weeks  ago." 

"That's  what  we'll  both  be  doing  again 
before  long,"  said  I.  "  I  wonder  how  long  it'll 
be  —  not  a  great  while,  I  hope." 

He  looked  at  me  curiously.  "  I  didn't  sup- 
pose you'd  be  in  a  great  hurry  to  be  off," 
he  said.  Then  he  laughed  and  punched  one 
of  the  pillows.  "  I've  got  the  idea  that  home's 
a  pretty  good  place,  and  I  doubt  if  you  succeed 
in  getting  me  away  at  any  great  rate  of  speed." 

"  There's  enough  getting  ready  to  do,  even 
at  the  best  of  it,  to  keep  us  back  for  a  while," 
said  I.  "As  I  figure  it  —  " 

"  When  you  figure  it,"  he  cut  in,  "  don't 
forget  to  figure  in  the  fun.  I  haven't  had  any 

71 


Roger   Drake 

fun  since  the  deuce  knows  when,  and  I'm  going 
to  have  a  little  now.  Then  I'll  go  out  with 
you  and  find  as  many  copper  mines  or  gold 
mines  by  your  patent  scientific  system  as  you 
like." 

Then  he  went  on  more  seriously.  "You 
never  told  enough  about  your  copper  scheme 
in  your  letters.  As  for  me,  I'd  rather  go  on 
hunting  for  the  stuff  that  needs  nothing  but  the 
stamp  of  these  United  States  on  it  to  make 
it  into  the  real,  cold,  jingling  money.  If  you 
have  that,  you  aren't  bothered  about  supply 
and  demand,  and  market  values,  and  I  don't 
know  what  other  economic  theories.  You've 
no  concern,  except  to  get  it,  and  when  you've 
got  enough,  you  can  quit  and  have  your  fun. 
But  then,  if  your  scheme's  better,  I'm  with  you. 
Tell  me  about  it." 

He  threw  himself  back  on  the  bed  with  a 
yawn  as  he  finished  speaking,  so  I  said  that 
two  o'clock  in  the  morning  was  no  time  to 
begin  talking  copper. 

"  Then  tell  me  something  else,"  he  said,  with 
a  laugh.  "  Isn't  my  little  cousin  Adele  the 
prettiest  thing  you  ever  saw  ? " 

"  She's  the  most  beautiful  woman  in  the 
world,  I  think." 

'  You  do  ?  "  he  said,  looking  at  me  curiously. 
72 


Roger   Drake 

"  Well,  it  seems  to  me  you've  been  pretty 
hard  headed  to  spend  your  time  with  Fletcher's 
crazy  hobbies  instead  of  falling  in  love  with 
her." 

"  I  have  fallen  in  love  with  her,"  said  I, 
"and  I've  told  her  about  it,  and  we're 
engaged." 

"  The  devil  you  are  !  "  There  seemed  to 
be  anger  as  well  as  surprise  in  his  words.  It 
blazed  up,  like  a  parlor  match,  with  a  splutter, 
but  it  was  gone  directly.  "  I  know  that's  not 
a  pretty  way  to  congratulate  a  fellow.  I  beg 
your  pardon ;  all  I  meant  was,  why  didn't  you 
tell  me  ?  " 

"  I  haven't  told  anybody.  I  shouldn't  have 
told  you,  for  she  hasn't  told  me  I  might  tell, 
yet.  It  only  happened  to-night.  To-night, 
just  before  you  came  in,"  I  went  on,  for  he 
looked  at  me  incredulously. 

"  To-night,  eh,"  he  said  musingly.  He  tied 
the  cord  around  his  waist  into  a  complicated 
series  of  knots,  and  untied  it  again.  "  Then 
I'm  not  to  mention  it  ?  "  he  said  at  last,  rising. 

"  No,  if  you  please,"  said  I. 

He  nodded  his  head  and  shuffled  back  into 
his  own  bedroom. 

Next  day  I  went  over  to  see  Fletcher.  He 
let  me  know  he  was  glad  to  see  me  with  a  sort 

73 


Roger   Drake 

of  silent  cordiality  which  he  alone  was  able  to 
make  me  feel.  He  said  almost  nothing,  asked 
no  questions,  made  no  guesses,  but  I  felt  again 
how  good  it  was  to  be  in  the  same  room  with 
him.  He  was  still  experimenting  over  that 
dynamo  armature,  and  he  said  he  was  appar- 
ently no  nearer  getting  it  right  than  he'd  been 
six  months  before ;  but  when  I  suggested  that 
he'd  better  turn  to  something  else  that  would 
show  results,  he  only  smiled  and  bent  over  his 
lathe  again. 

I  saw  very  little  of  him  in  those  days,  though 
he  insisted  on  my  coming  to  live  with  him 
again.  I  had  very  little  leisure ;  for  Stanley 
had  said  to  me,  seriously,  that  the  sooner  we 
could  be  off  again,  the  better  he  would  be 
pleased ;  and  as  that  was  just  what  I  wanted, 
too,  I  made  things  move  as  fast  as  possible. 
But  what  leisure  I  did  have  I  spent  at  the 
Stanleys',  waiting  for  a  word  with  Adele. 

For  three  days  after  that  night  when  I  had 
declared  myself  to  her,  I  had  not  one  moment 
alone  with  her.  My  first  opportunity  came  on 
Sunday.  We  had  all  gone  to  church  together, 
and  after  service  George  went  for  a  drive  with 
his  father  and  mother,  and  Adele  and  I  walked 
home.  I  remember  that  I  couldn't  take  my 
opportunity  when  1  had  it,  and  we  walked  a 

74 


Roger   Drake 

little  way  in  silence.  Then  I  told  her  how 
eagerly  I  had  been  waiting  for  this  next  mo- 
ment of  ours  together,  and  how  much  I  had 
to  tell  her  —  though  it  wouldn't  come  to  my 
tongue. 

"  I've  been  pretty  anxious  to  speak  to  you, 
too,"  she  said.  "  I  was  so  afraid  you'd  tell 
about — you  know  what  I  mean  —  and  I 
couldn't  find  any  chance  to  tell  you  not  to. 
I  hardly  dared  come  down  to  breakfast  the 
next  morning.  It  was  such  a  relief  when  I  saw 
from  the  way  they  acted  that  they  didn't  know." 

"  I  have  told  one  person,  Adele.  I  didn't 
mean  to  tell  any  one  till  I  had  asked  you  if  I 
might,  but  his  question  came  in  such  a  way 
that  I  had  to  tell  him  or  lie  to  him.  It  was 
George  Stanley." 

"  Oh,  of  course  it  was,"  she  said  impatiently. 
"  Of  course  you  had  to  tell  the  one  person  —  " 
She  checked  that  sentence  in  the  middle  and 
began  again.  "  That's  just  like  a  man.  If  a 
girl  lets  a  man  kiss  her,  any  man  on  earth,  she 
can  be  perfectly  sure  that  he'll  go  and  tell." 

"I  didn't  tell  George  Stanley  that  I  had 
kissed  you.  I  told  him  that  you  and  I  were 
engaged  to  be  married.  That  is  true,  isn't  it, 
Adele  ?  Isn't  that  what  you  meant  when  you 
told  me  to  kiss  you  ?  " 

75 


Roger   Drake 

"  Why,  yes,  I  suppose  so.  But  I  wanted  it 
for  a  secret,  just  between  us,  and  you've  spoiled 
it  all." 

I  hadn't  much  to  say  after  that,  and  we 
walked  along  home  in  silence.  After  we  had 
reached  the  house,  however,  she  told  me  she 
would  forgive  me,  and  that  it  didn't  matter, 
after  all.  She  came  and  sat  beside  me  on  the 
big  drawing-room  sofa  —  we  had  the  house 
quite  to  ourselves  for  that  hour  —  as  loverlike 
as  could  be,  and  I  thought  that  at  last  I  was 
perfectly  happy.  When  we  heard  the  Stanleys 
coming  back  from  their  drive,  she  whispered, 
"  You  won't  say  anything  about  it  to  any  one, 
will  you  ?  Not  even  to  him  ?  " 

I  began  to  promise  her  I  would  not,  but  she 
interrupted  me  with  a  kiss,  and  fled  away 
upstairs. 

I  soon  realized  that  Stanley  had  by  no  means 
entirely  recovered  from  the  gold  fever,  and  that 
a  good  part  of  my  work  of  preparation  would 
be  getting  him  converted  to  my  ideas.  I  counted 
on  Fletcher  for  valuable  aid  in  that  part  of  the 
work,  but  there  I  found  I  was  wrong.  The 
two  men  had  known  each  other  for  years  and 
had  never  taken  to  each  other  very  kindly. 
Stanley  regarded  Fletcher  as  a  harmless  crank, 
and  could  not  be  induced  to  treat  any  of  his 
76 


Roger   Drake 

opinions  seriously ;  and  Fletcher,  being  keenly 
aware  of  it,  would  not,  in  Stanley's  presence, 
express  one  on  any  subject  whatever,  least  of 
all  the  one  dearest  to  him. 

So  I  had  to  make  the  best  of  my  own  clumsy 
eloquence,  and  make  up  for  its  defects  by  my 
positive  conviction  that  I  was  right.  I  knew 
that  iron,  or  coal,  or  copper  was  more  likely  to 
make  the  man  who  found  it  rich,  than  gold 
itself,  and  my  certainty  made  some  impression 
on  him.  I  doubt  if  I  would  have  convinced 
him,  however,  if  there  hadn't  sprung  up,  just 
then,  a  little  excitement  over  an  alleged  find  of 
copper  down  in  Virginia.  He  read  about  it  in 
the  papers,  and  was  soon  very  eager  to  go  down 
and  have  a  look  at  it.  I  didn't  take  much 
stock  in  any  copper  deposit  in  the  Atlantic 
range,  but  I  was  willing  to  go  along.  It  proved 
to  be  just  what  I  expected,  and  what  so  many 
of  the  mines  in  that  section  have  proved  to  be, 
a  zone  of  black  oxide  a  little  way  down,  rich 
but  thin  as  the  cream  on  a  pan  of  milk,  with 
nothing  much  but  magnetic  pyrites  below.  I 
nearly  gave  the  death  blow  to  Stanley's  new 
enthusiasm  by  refusing  point  blank  to  have 
anything  to  do  with  it,  but  after  a  little  argu- 
ment we  came  home.  We  made  our  real  start 
somewhat  later. 

77 


Roger   Drake 

I  smile  a  little  now  over  the  confidant  way  in 
which  we  two  youngsters  set  out  to  find  a 
copper  mine ;  not  an  ordinary  strike,  mind 
you,  but  a  big  one.  We  justified  our  expecta- 
tions, to  be  sure,  but  the  chances  were  so  heavy 
against  us  that  it  seems  strange  they  didn'- 
frighten  us. 

We  were  really  pretty  well  equipped,  though. 
State  geological  surveys  weren't  in  those  days 
what  they  are  now,  but  through  them,  and  in 
one  way  and  another,  I  knew  where  the  actual 
copper  was,  and  I  figured  that  I  ought  to  make 
a  pretty  good  guess  at  where  some  of  the  pos- 
sible copper  was,  and  I  knew  copper  when  I 
saw  it.  We  had  money  and  time  enough  to  do 
the  thing  thoroughly,  and  that  was  how  we 
meant  to  do  it. 

The  evening  before  we  started  I  had  a  long 
talk  with  Adele  —  all  about  how  sure  to  succeed 
we  were,  and  what  a  short  time  we'd  be  about 
it.  I  said  good-by  to  her  then,  and  kissed 
her,  and  she  gave  me  a  big  copper  cent  for 
luck ;  nobody  but  Stanley  knew  yet  of  our 
engagement,  so  I  was  to  part  with  her  in  pub- 
lic as  though  we  were  nothing  but  good  friends. 
When  the  time  came  next  day,  and  the  women 
folk  gathered  at  the  door  to  see  us  off,  Stan- 
ley kissed  his  mother  and  then  his  sister, — 
78 


Roger   Drake 

Mrs.  Archibald  she  was  then,  —  and  then  he 
turned  to  Adele.  She  blushed  and  made  some 
little  resistance,  but  he  laughed,  and  saying 
something  about  cousins,  kissed  her  full  on  the 
lips.  I  didn't  like  any  too  well  his  having  a 
privilege  denied  to  me,  but  I  put  the  best  face 
I  could  on  it,  and  laughed  with  the  others. 

For  the  first  few  days,  I  remember,  Stanley 
was  in  the  worst  mood  imaginable.  He  wouldn't 
hear  of  our  having  any  chance  of  success,  he 
wouldn't  allow  me  to  hint  at  any  possibility  of 
failure ;  he  was  almost  intolerable.  But  one 
morning  he  waked  up,  rubbed  his  eyes,  and 
said  he'd  got  the  devil  out  of  his  system.  It 
seemed  to  be  so ;  from  then  on  until  seven 
months  later  when  we  made  our  strike  up  north 
of  Red  City,  his  good  spirits  never  flagged. 

Those  seven  months  don't  carry  on  my 
story  at  all,  and  they  must  be  passed  over  with 
no  more  than  a  word.  We  went  northwest 
and  spent  the  fall  looking  for  copper,  some- 
times in  the  vicinity  of  large  mines  already  in 
operation,  sometimes  taking  longer  chances 
and  going  off  into  unexplored  territory.  We 
travelled  as  surveyors  and  sometimes  had  quite 
a  party  with  us.  We  found  lots  of  ore  that 
showed  more  or  less  copper,  but  nothing  that 
was  good  enough  for  us. 

79 


Roger   Drake 

When  the  cold  weather  came  on,  we  went 
south  and  spent  the  winter  in  Arizona,  par- 
ticularly in  exploring  a  place  called  Rattlesnake 
Gulch.  The  inhabitants  down  there  professed 
a  great  contempt  for  the  rattlers,  but  at  the  ad- 
vice of  somebody  we  took  a  bull-snake  along 
with  us  as  a  protection  against  them.  We 
carried  him  coiled  around  the  pommel  of  Stan- 
ley's saddle,  and  kept  him  amiable  with  con- 
densed milk  ;  and  when,  once  or  twice,  we  turned 
him  loose  against  an  obstreperous  rattler,  he  al- 
ways disposed  of  him  in  the  most  businesslike 
way.  We  were  going  to  have  a  look  at  an 
abandoned  mine,  and  when  we  reached  it  I 
got  Stanley  to  let  me  down  at  the  end  of  a 
rope,  for  it  wasn't  very  deep.  When  I  got 
down  there  in  the  dark  and  lighted  the  candle 
I  had  with  me,  I  saw,  I  think,  thousands  of 
those  snakes.  You  may  believe  I  signalled 
Stanley  to  pull  me  up  in  a  hurry.  When  he 
got  me  out,  he  was  as  white  as  a  sheet,  and  said 
he  had  nearly  dropped  me.  I'm  not  what  you'd 
call  nervous,  but  I've  never  wanted  to  see  a 
rattlesnake  since. 

We  didn't  like  the  prospect  down  there  very 

well ;  it  was  too  far  out  of  the  world,  in  those 

days,  to  be  commercially  possible,  so  along  in 

March  we  went  back  to  the  railroad  and  got 

80 


Roger   Drake 

up  north  again.  It  was  about  the  first  of  April 
when  we  struck  Red  City. 

As  nearly  everything,  from  now  on,  which 
goes  into  this  story  took  place  there  or  there- 
abouts, I  must  try  to  give  you  some  idea  what 
it  was  like.  It  is  on  Bent  River,  at,  or  rather 
just  below,  Jackson  Falls.  The  river  there  has 
a  drop  altogether  of  nearly  a  hundred  feet. 
Fifty  miles  below  the  city,  at  Brownsville,  it 
drops  again,  so  that  except  above  the  city  it  is 
not  navigable,  but  is  useful  to  Red  City  in 
providing  it  with  a  valuable  water  power.  The 
city's  connection  with  the  world  depends  upon 
what  was  then  a  Granger  railroad  called  the  Red 
City  and  Texas,  of  which  more  will  be  said 
hereafter. 

The  town  itself  had  been  an  outpost  village, 
left  stranded  by  the  great  tide  of  immigration 
which  swept  west  before  the  war.  It  was  pleas- 
antly located,  for  just  above  it  the  high  lime- 
stone cliffs  —  which,  farther  north,  hold  Bent 
River  in  a  narrow  gorge  between  them  —  open 
out  and  enclose  a  valley  perhaps  three  miles 
wide,  protecting  it  at  the  same  time  from  the 
north  wind.  The  town  owed  its  activity  at  the 
time  Stanley  and  I  first  went  there  to  some  sen- 
sational strikes  of  copper  which  had  been  made 
about  and  within  it  in  the  course  of  the  past 
G  81 


Roger  Drake 

two  years.  From  being  a  poor  little  village,  it 
became  within  a  year  a  tremendously  energetic 
little  city  of  about  ten  thousand  inhabitants, 
most  of  them  a  pretty  hard  lot.  Getting  rich 
very  fast  some  of  them  were,  and  everybody  else 
was  anxious  to.  They  were  looking  for  ore,  and 
finding  it  under  the  very  streets.  The  town  is 
the  only  one  I  know  of,  except  Leadville, 
Colorado,  where,  instead  of  levying  a  municipal 
tax,  they  could  for  a  few  years  declare  a  divi- 
dend. 

There  wasn't  a  great  deal  of  capital  behind 
all  the  activity  there,  and  consequently  all  their 
smelting  operations  were  as  crude  as  possible. 
Instead  of  using  calciners,  or  blast  furnaces,  they 
all  treated  their  ore  by  the  process  known  as 
heap  roasting,  and  the  heaps  rolling  out  great 
clouds  of  sulphurous  acid  gas  were  located  pretty 
much  anywhere  where  it  was  convenient  to  the 
owners.  The  result  made  that  little  valley,  which 
must  once  have  been  one  of  the  pleasantest  places 
on  earth,  a  pretty  good  realization  of  the  popular 
notion  of  hell  —  fires,  sulphur,  devils,  pits,  and 
all.  I  am  mayor  of  Red  City  to-day,  and  as  I 
don't  want  to  be  thought  to  be  blackening  my 
own  nest,  I  will  say  that  the  town  has  undergone 
a  second  transformation,  and  it  is  now  a  very 
good  place  to  live  in.  But  in  those  days  we 

82 


Roger   Drake 

used  to  say  that  a  man  who  had  to  have  air  to 
breathe  had  better  not  come  to  Red  City. 

Of  course  that  wasn't  what  Stanley  and  I  were 
thinking  about  when  we  looked  out  of  the  car 
window  down  into  that  valley.  We  were  think- 
ing of  the  amount  of  wealth  there  must  be  right 
near  us,  and  wondering  how  much  of  it  we 
should  be  able  to  annex  to  ourselves,  person- 
ally. There  were  plenty  of  other  young  fellows 
thereabout,  some  on  the  same  train  with  us, 
who  were  wondering  the  same  thing,  but  we 
had  between  us  two  great  advantages  over  most 
of  them,  —  money  and  experience,  —  and  we 
were  pretty  confident  of  success. 

We  took  all  the  time  we  wanted,  for  Stan- 
ley had  learned  that  lesson,  too,  by  then,  and 
looked  over  the  whole  ground  very  thor- 
oughly. Every  inch  of  the  valley  was  taken 
up  and  was  being  worked,  in  some  sort 
of  fashion,  which  was  what  we  had  expected, 
and,  of  course,  there  was  the  greatest  variety  in 
the  results  they  were  getting.  The  bulk  of  the 
copper  lay  in  a  great  lode,  which  struck  diago- 
nally across  the  valley.  At  last  we  bought  a 
ninety-day  option  on  a  mineral  lease  on  some 
property  that  looked  to  us  pretty  good.  The 
fellow  who  owned  it  knew  nothing  about  the 
way  to  work  it,  and,  of  course,  couldn't  make  it 

83 


Roger   Drake 

pay,  and  so  was  glad  enough  to  sell  at  a  very 
reasonable  figure. 

We  were  pretty  glad  to  buy,  too,  and  we 
sent  an  order  East  for  what  outfit  of  machinery 
we  needed,  and  told  ourselves  that  our  long 
search  was  ended,  which  shows  how  little  we 
knew  about  it.  There  was  nothing  we  could 
do  until  our  machinery  arrived,  and  as  our 
confidence  in  our  prospective  purchase  grew, 
our  impatience  grew  with  it.  We  loafed  about 
the  mine,  we  played  pool  by  the  hour  at  the 
hotel,  and  at  last  we  took  to  lounging  at  the 
railroad  station  about  train  time,  making  the  ex- 
cuse for  ourselves  that  we  might  see  our  car- 
load of  machinery  come  rolling  in  any  time 
now  —  though  neither  of  us  expected  it  for  a 
month  more. 

It  is  the  tritest  kind  of  generality  to  say  that 
the  greatest  events  of  our  lives  depend  on  the 
most  trivial,  but  when  I  think  back  over  my 
life,  I  realize  how  true  it  is.  If  I  hadn't  been 
shaving  George  Stanley  the  Saturday  night 
when  Jim  Taylor  broke  loose  and  went  out 
to  shoot  the  town ;  if  I  hadn't  left  that  survey- 
ing party  in  time  to  reach  the  Stanleys'  house 
an  hour  before  he  did;  if  I  hadn't,  just  because 
there  was  nothing  else  to  do,  gone  up  to  the 
Red  City  railroad  station  the  same  day  and 
84 


Roger   Drake 

the  same  hour  that  Christian  Jansen  took  his 
daughter  there  to  see  her  start  off  for  a  year 
East,- — what  a  different  story  this  would  have 
been,  if  it  had  been  any  story  at  all. 

I  went  alone  that  morning,  as  Stanley  was 
amusing  himself  in  a  shooting  gallery  down 
town ;  found  out,  as  I  knew  I  should,  that 
our  car  had  not  come  in  yet,  and  then  sat 
down  on  a  baggage  truck,  and  hoped  against 
hope  that  something  would  turn  up. 

But  in  a  few  minutes  I  was  diverted  by  the 
appearance  of  two  strangers,  a  man  and  a  woman, 
on  the  platform.  At  first  I  could  see  nothing 
of  her  except  the  corner  of  her  skirt,  for  he  stood 
directly  between  us,  but  he  was  well  worth  look- 
ing at.  He  was  a  good  six  inches  more  than 
six  feet  tall,  and  was  built  on  the  proportions 
of  a  Samson.  His  hair  was  so  light  in  color 
that,  with  the  sun  on  it,  it  looked  almost  white, 
and  when  I  caught  a  partial  glimpse  of  his  face, 
I  saw  that  it  was  covered  with  a  long,  untrimmed 
beard.  All  together  he  looked  like  the  pictures 
of  the  old-time  Vikings.  His  voice  was  as  big 
as  he  was,  and  came  rolling  along  the  platform 
to  me.  He  was  talking  in  English,  but  with  a 
foreign  accent  which  kept  me  from  understand- 
ing much  of  what  he  said. 

Presently  their  positions  altered  a  little  so 
85 


Roger   Drake 

that  I  could  see  the  girl  also.  I  guessed  her 
age,  rightly  as  it  proved,  at  about  twenty.  For 
a  moment  she  turned  away  from  her  father,  and 
I  saw  that  though  she  was  smiling,  there  were 
tears  in  her  eyes.  It  was  evident  enough  from 
all  the  circumstances  that  she  was  going  away 
alone,  and  that  each  of  them  was  trying  to 
make  the  parting  as  easy  as  possible  for  the 
other.  I  might  have  gone  on  watching  them 
until  their  train  pulled  in  if  I  hadn't  been 
directed  by  the  girl's  eyes  to  a  man  who  was 
coming  up  the  platform  toward  them.  He 
was  a  fellow  named  Hogan,  whom  I  may  call 
the  town  buffoon.  He  had  an  aversion  to 
work,  and  he  was  supposed  to  be  exceedingly 
funny  when  he  was  drunk,  so  the  public-spirited 
citizens  of  the  place  kept  him  drunk  most  of 
the  time  for  the  general  amusement.  Of  course, 
she  knew  nothing  more  about  him  than  that  he 
was  tipsy,  and  that  he  evidently  meant  to  try 
some  of  his  drunken  wit  on  her  father.  He 
was  already  pointing  at  him  and  mumbling  to 
himself,  and  the  station  loafers  were  drawing 
up  close  to  see  the  fun. 

Besides  the  disgust  in  the  girl's  face,  there 

was  a  look  of  fear  which  I  couldn't  understand, 

seeing  that  her  father  was  big  enough  to  kick 

poor  Hogan  clear  over  a  pile  of  mixed  freight 

86 


"I  SAW  MY  OLD  VIKING  STRIDING  DOWN  THE  STREET." 


Roger   Drake 

which  lay  close  by,  and  that  he  seemed  to  me 
a  person  who  would  do  it  with  very  little  hesi- 
tation. But  then  it  struck  me  that  that  scene, 
which  I  was  chuckling  over  in  advance,  was 
exactly  what  she  was  afraid  of,  so  I  got  up  and 
took  a  hand  in  the  game  myself. 

Hogan  was  determined  to  pull  the  old  gen- 
tleman's whiskers,  or  something  of  that  sort, 
and  it  needed  a  good  deal  of  persuasion  and 
some  little  bullying,  together  with  hints  of 
more  drinks  in  town,  to  get  him  to  come  away, 
but  at  last  he  came,  to  the  great  disappoint- 
ment of  the  crowd.  I  noticed  that  whiskey 
was  largely  responsible  for  his  condition,  so  I 
bought  him  an  immense  quantity  of  beer,  and 
thereby  terminated  his  usefulness,  from  Red 
City's  point  of  view,  for  that  day.  Then  I 
went  back  to  the  hotel  and  waited  for  Stanley. 

But  before  he  came  I  saw  my  old  Viking 
striding  down  the  street.  He  turned  into  the 
hotel,  and  then,  to  my  surprise  —  for  I  did  not 
know  that  he  had  ever  seen  me  before  —  he 
came  up  to  me  and  thanked  me.  "  My 
daughter  told  me,"  he  said,  "  that  you  have 
saved  both  of  us  from  much  annoyance.  I 
thank  you.  My  name  is  Christian  Jansen." 
I  told  him  my  name  in  return,  and  after  a 
word  or  two  I  drew  up  another  chair  for  him, 

87 


Roger   Drake 

and  we  sat  down  together  near  the  window  to 
wait  for  the  dinner  bell. 

Stanley  and  I  found  it  hard  to  kill  time  in 
Red  City,  but  it  is  certain  that  few  of  its 
inhabitants  in  those  days  would  have  called 
it  dull.  Only  the  other  day,  one  of  the  old- 
timers,  who  now  runs  a  little  broken-down 
barber  shop  where  I  go  once  in  a  while  for  old 
time's  sake,  was  making  a  lament  that  things 
weren't  as  they  had  been  in  the  early  days  of 
the  city.  Heaven  be  thanked  that  they  aren't ! 
Just  in  the  few  minutes  we  sat  there  waiting 
for  dinner  we  saw  two  distinct  street  fights  —  I 
mean  that  each  arose  from  causes  of  its  own  — 
and  there  were  a  dozen  minor  disturbances. 

Father  Jansen  looked  at  it  in  a  kind  of  ab- 
straction, as  though  it  were  all  a  hundred  years 
away.  Finally  he  began  quoting  to  himself 
out  of  the  Bible.  " t  What  is  man  that  thou 
art  mindful  of  him,  or  the  son  of  man  that 
thou  visitest  him  ? ' '  Then  he  turned  to  me 
and  said  energetically :  "  This  place,  as  God 
made  it,  was  paradise.  You  see  the  hell  that 
men  have  made  here." 

I  agreed  with  him,  and  I  said  so,  and  at  that 

he  began  to  tell  me  what  the  village  had  been 

like   before   the   copper   had   been   discovered. 

He  had  had  many  friends  here  in  those  days, 

88 


Roger   Drake 

but  in  the  past  two  years  they  had  all  gone 
away,  and  he  never  came  to  town  now,  except 
when  it  was  necessary. 

While  we  were  talking,  Stanley  came  back, 
and  at  his  suggestion  we  dined  together.  The 
old  gentleman  did  not  say  very  much,  but 
when  we  had  finished  we  felt  pretty  well 
acquainted  with  him.  As  he  rose  from  the 
table,  he  said  that  for  the  first  time  he  should 
leave  Red  City  with  some  regret.  Then  as  an 
afterthought  he  asked  us  if  we  would  not  go 
home  with  him.  "  It  is  a  long  time  since  my 
house  has  received  a  visitor,  but  that  will  but 
make  your  welcome  the  warmer." 

We  didn't  know  where  he  lived,  but  we 
didn't  much  care,  so  long  as  it  was  beyond 
sight  and  smell  of  Red  City,  and  speaking  at 
the  same  time,  we  said  we  would  go  with  him. 
He  said  it  was  high  time  to  be  off";  so  as  soon 
as  possible  afterwards  we  set  out  up  the  valley 
of  Bent  River.  I  was  surprised  at  the  direc- 
tion he  took,  for  I  didn't  know  that  any  one 
lived  up  that  way ;  but  after  we  left  the  out- 
skirts of  the  city  we  found  a  track  up  the 
gorge,  which  improved  with  the  miles  into  a 
very  good  path.  In  some  places  where  the 
gorge  was  narrowest  there  were  extensive  cut- 
tings in  the  rock  to  give  wayfarers  a  high  and 

89 


Roger  Drake 

dry  passage  in  bad  weather.  We  had  to  ford 
the  stream  twice. 

Our  host  rode  on  ahead,  and  we  both  noticed 
that  the  farther  into  the  wilderness  we  pene- 
trated, the  lighter  his  spirits  seemed  to  grow; 
and  if  we  occasionally  had  time  to  wonder  how 
much  farther  we  were  going,  or  what  sort  of 
place  he  was  taking  us  to,  most  of  the  time, 
while  he  talked  of  the  woods,  and  the  creatures 
that  lived  in  them,  and  of  some  adventures  he 
had  had  in  this  very  gorge,  we  were  thinking 
little  of  where  we  were  going,  and  caring  less. 

There  wasn't  much  light  down  in  there  after 
the  middle  of  the  afternoon,  and  to  us  who 
weren't  used  to  it,  it  was  rather  ticklish  busi- 
ness. At  the  upper  ford  we  nearly  had  an 
accident.  The  water  was  shoulder  high  on  the 
horses,  and  pretty  swift,  and  Stanley  missed 
the  crossing,  and  was  all  but  carried  down- 
stream. There  was  a  wild  scramble  for  a 
part  of  a  minute,  but  the  plucky  little  horse 
knew  his  business,  and  got  his  footing  again. 
When  we  were  all  safe  on  the  other  bank, 
Father  Jansen  said  that  the  river  had  risen  a 
foot  since  we  left  the  lower  crossing  and  that 
we  were  probably  in  for  a  big  freshet. 

If  Stanley  and  I  could  have  guessed  what 
that  freshet  was  going  to  do  for  us,  we  should 

90 


Roger   Drake 

have  taken  the  prophecy  with  better  grace  ;  but 
as  we  didn't,  the  prospect  of  being  shut  up  on 
some  bleak  plateau  until  the  river  should  go 
down  again  was  not  alluring,  and  we  rode  along 
for  the  next  five  miles  in  a  none  too  cheerful 
frame  of  mind.  At  last  our  host  checked  his 
horse  to  let  us  come  up  with  him,  and  pointing 
to  a  place  a  few  yards  ahead  where  the  path  bent 
sharply  around  a  promontory  and  lost  itself  to 
our  view,  he  said  :  — 

"  Just  around  that  corner,  gentlemen,  is  my 
house.  Will  you  take  precedence  of  me  ?"  And 
forcing  his  horse  to  the  very  edge  of  the  path, 
he  compelled  us  to  squeeze  between  him  and 
the  cliff  and  ride  on  ahead.  It  was  not  a  cheap 
piece  of  gallantry,  for  it  seemed  that  one  of  us 
must  push  him  into  the  river,  but  by  some  mir- 
acle we  didn't,  and  we  rode  down  the  path  and 
around  the  corner. 

We  rode  out  of  the  night  —  for  by  then  it  was 
night  in  the  gorge  —  into  the  full  blaze  of  the 
sunset ;  out  of  the  wilderness,  into  the  loveliest, 
happiest  spot  I  have  ever  seen.  For  there  the 
northwest  cliff,  with  the  river  at  its  feet,  swept 
around  in  a  broad  curve,  whilst  the  other,  in- 
stead of  hugging  parallel  to  it,  curved  away  in 
the  opposite  direction,  enclosing  a  little  oval 
valley  about  two  miles  long  and  a  mile  wide. 

91 


Roger  Drake 

It  was  carpeted  with  a  patchwork  of  the  clear 
emerald-green  of  young  wheat  and  the  rich 
golden  brown  of  freshly  ploughed  land,  and  the 
right-hand  cliff,  which  had  been  white  at  noon, 
was  pink  as  coral  in  the  sunset.  The  great 
barns  and  stables  scattered  over  it  told  of  its 
prosperity,  and  a  one-story,  rambling  limestone 
house,  with  a  wide  chimney,  and  an  equally 
wide  arched  door,  seemed  ready  to  make  us 
welcome. 

Our  host  rode  up  beside  us,  for  here  the  path 
widened  into  a  comfortable  roadway,  and  swept 
the  prospect  with  his  arm. 

" f  The  valleys  laugh  and  sing ! '  Is  it  not 
so  ? "  he  said. 

Then  noticing  that  we  were  cold, — the  north 
wind  blowing  down  that  gorge  had  cut  into  us 
like  a  knife,  and  since  that  upper  crossing  where 
we  had  to  get  thoroughly  wet,  we  had  felt  as 
though  we  were  frozen  to  our  saddles,  —  he 
hurried  us  into  the  house. 

An  hour  later  we  had  finished  supper,  and 
were  sitting  around  a  roaring  fire  of  logs,  dis- 
cussing a  hot  punch.  We  had  met  our  host's 
only  son  immediately  upon  our  arrival,  and 
now  he  made  one  of  the  party.  He  was  then 
about  eighteen,  and  gave  promise  of  being  one 
day  as  big  as  his  father.  He  was  a  clear-eyed, 
92 


Roger   Drake 

level-headed  young  fellow,  much  interested  to 
know  from  us  what  the  world  was  like,  for  he 
had  never  been  much  away  from  this  valley, 
where  he  was  born.  What  with  our  answers 
to  his  questions,  and  his  father's  philosophical 
comments  on  them,  and  with  the  flood  steadily 
rising  outside,  and  providing  a  topic  of  very 
present  interest,  the  talk  ran  on  for  hours,  and 
it  was  long  past  midnight  when  we  turned  in. 

We  meant  to  go  back  to  Red  City  next  day, 
but  the  elements  took  that  out  of  our  hands. 
We  found  in  the  morning  that  the  flood  had 
made  a  new  high-water  mark  the  night  before, 
having  risen  above  Father  Jansen's  embank- 
ment, and  flooded  one  of  his  wheat  fields,  which 
he  told  us  had  never  occurred  before.  The 
damage  was  not  great,  however,  and  all  day 
Sunday  the  water  subsided  rapidly. 

I  remember  thinking  that  day  what  a  pa- 
thetic place  a  house  must  always  be  with  no 
women-folk  about  it.  Mrs.  Jansen,  1  learned, 
had  died  about  two  years  before,  and  then,  and 
for  many  years  afterward,  there  was  an  empty 
place  in  the  lives  of  her  husband  and  her  chil- 
dren. Of  course  the  loneliness  of  the  two  men 
was  sharper  at  the  time  of  our  visit,  for  Barget 
—  it  was  then  that  I  first  learned  her  name  — 
Barget  was  gone  too.  They  concealed  their 

93 


Roger   Drake 

feelings  from  their  guests  as  well  as  they  could, 
and  we  enjoyed  the  day  so  much  that  we 
forgot  to  regret  the  fact  that  we  shouldn't  be 
back  to  Red  City  in  time  to  see  our  machin- 
ery coming  in  on  the  morning  train ;  that  is, 
supposing  that  it  did,  which  wasn't  at  all  likely. 

By  Monday  morning  the  river  was  back  at 
but  little  above  its  normal  level,  and  Stanley 
and  I,  to  make  up  for  our  delay,  got  off  as 
early  as  possible.  It  was  indeed  just  about 
sunrise  when  we  turned  out  of  the  valley  and 
down  the  gorge.  It  is  a  strange  thing,  but  on 
that  morning  —  that  morning  of  all  mornings 
—  as  we  rode  along  we  were  neither  thinking 
nor  talking  about  copper.  We  had  thought 
and  talked  of  nothing  else  for  the  past  half- 
year,  but  our  little  visit  with  Christian  Jansen 
had  started  our  ideas  off  on  a  new  trail  for 
the  time  being.  At  no  other  moment  in  all 
those  months  could  the  discovery  of  an  im- 
mense strike  of  copper  have  come  without  fair 
warning,  and  except  after  days  or  hours  at  least 
of  anticipation.  But  it  was  at  that  moment 
that  it  came. 

I    remember    Stanley    was    saying    that    he 

wished  we  had  found  out  more  about  Christian 

Jansen's    personal    history,  when    he    checked 

himself  suddenly,  and  looked  down  the  gorge. 

94 


Roger  Drake 

"  Hello,"  he  said,  "  the  freshet  has  made 
wild  work  of  it  down  here.  Look  on  ahead, 
Drake  —  no,  on  the  other  side.  You're  a 
geologist,  but  I'll  bet  you  never  saw  any 
purple  like  that  before." 

I  crowded  my  horse  up  so  that  I  could 
see,  for  he  was  leading.  Just  ahead  the  river 
made  a  sharp  quirk  to  the  left,  —  toward  us, 
that  is,  for  we  were  riding  down  the  left  bank, 
—  and  that  twist  had  let  the  whole  force  of  the 
flood  and  all  that  it  bore  along  with  it  go 
driving,  crashing,  squarely  into  the  face  of 
the  opposite  cliff.  Trees,  gravel,  rock,  every- 
thing not  immovable,  had  gone  down  under  it 
and  along  with  it,  and  there  upon  the  naked 
face  of  the  rock  shone  in  the  morning  sunlight 
a  great  patch  of  flaming  purple.  There  was 
brown  mixed  up  in  it,  and  yellow,  and  blue, 
but  it  was  all  lost,  devoured  in  that  wonderful 
purple. 

I  stared  at  it  for  one  breathless  minute,  and 
then  I  drove  the  spurs  into  my  horse.  I 
pushed  by  Stanley,  and  ran  my  horse  down  the 
bank.  I  believe  I  should  have  done  that  if 
the  fall  had  been  sheer  instead  of  one  in  three, 
for  I  was,  for  the  moment,  as  crazy  as  a  man 
could  be.  My  horse  was  as  nimble  as  a  goat, 
or  we  should  have  rolled  to  the  bottom  instead 

95 


Roger   Drake 

of  going  down  right  side  up,  and  he  was  as 
plucky  as  a  bulldog  or  he  would  have  refused 
the  water  when  I  turned  him  into  it. 

As  it  was  we  went  in  together,  but  the 
next  minute  he  was  beyond  his  depth,  and  I 
had  to  kick  off  the  stirrups  and  swim  for 
it ;  I  wasn't  much  of  a  swimmer  either.  But 
the  current  was  strong  enough  to  buoy  me  up, 
and  by  a  miracle  I  missed  the  rocks  and  snags, 
and  at  last  I  made  a  landing  just  about  at  the 
point  I  meant  to  reach,  and  scrambled  up  over 
the  debris.  Yes,  there  was  no  mistake  about 
it.  We  had  made  our  strike. 

Stanley,  who  had  seen  many  copper  ores,  but 
had  never  encountered  bornite,  thought  for  a 
minute  or  two  that  I  had  gone  clear  demented. 
He  got  down  to  the  bank  just  about  as  I  was 
climbing  up  the  other  side,  and  called  out  to 
know  what  was  the  matter  with  me.  Then  as 
he  saw  me  looking  closely  at  the  ore,  he  shouted 
to  know  if  it  was  worth  anything. 

"  Worth  anything !  Worth  anything  !  "  I 
called  back.  "  Come  over  here,  you  idiot. 
It's  the  biggest  strike  yet." 

Of  what  we  did  for  the  next  two  hours    I 

haven't  any  very  clear  recollection,  for  we  were 

simply  delirious  with  joy.     After  exploring  our 

discovery  as  well  as  we  could,  scraping  away  the 

96 


Roger   Drake 

debris  with  our  hands,  here  and  there,  and  lift- 
ing some  small  trees  which  covered  parts  of  it, 
we  sat  down,  limp  and  as  nearly  hysterical  as 
strong  men  can  be,  and  looked  at  each  other. 

"  We're  pretty  slow,"  said  I,  at  last,  getting 
to  my  feet.  "  Here  we  sit  and  grin  as  though 
the  fortune  was  all  in  the  bank,  and  we  don't 
know  whose  this  is  yet.  It  may  belong  to 
Jansen." 

I  didn't  much  think  it  did,  but  I  made  pretty 
good  time  catching  my  horse  and  riding  back 
to  ask  him  about  it.  Stanley  stayed  behind  to 
guard  the  place. 

I  found  Father  Jansen  without  delay,  but  I 
had  a  good  deal  of  difficulty  rinding  out  from 
him  what  I  wanted  to  know.  He  was  as  ex- 
cited as  I  was,  though  from  a  different  reason, 
and  as  I  poured  out  questions  and  explanations 
all  at  once,  it  was  no  wonder  that  he  did  not 
understand  me.  At  first  he  thought  the  dis- 
covery was  on  his  land ;  but  when  I  repeated, 
"  Across  the  river,"  he  said  :  — 

"  I  have  no  land  across  the  river.  It  is  all 
public  land." 

It  was  ours,  after  all. 


97 


CHAPTER  V 

I  DID  not  realize  until  long  afterward,  until 
I  had  grown  to  know  him  and  his  history, 
what  a  blow  that  find  of  copper  must  have  been 
to  Father  Jansen.  I  think  I  may  as  well  stop 
here  to  tell,  in  a  few  words,  his  story  which  I 
learned  a  bit  at  a  time  during  several  years. 

He  was  born  in  Stockholm,  Sweden,  of 
good  family,  and  upon  his  coming  to  his  ma- 
jority he  found  himself  master  of  a  considerable 
fortune.  The  seed  of  the  republican  and  altru- 
istic ideals,  sown  so  widely  over  Europe  during 
the  early  days  of  the  century,  found  good  soil 
in  him.  He  thought  he  saw  in  America,  if 
not  the  actual  realization  of  them,  at  least  the 
promise  soon  to  be  fulfilled ;  so,  bringing  his 
young  wife  with  him,  he  came  to  the  United 
States,  not  to  seek  his  fortune,  as  so  many 
regarded  it,  but  to  see  the  first  dawning  of  the 
millennium.  That  was  along  in  the  later 
forties.  The  East  was  not  the  ideal  land  that 
he  had  expected  to  find ;  so,  undiscouraged,  he 
98 


Roger   Drake 

pushed  farther  and  farther  west,  until  at  last 
he  made  a  home  in  the  peaceful  valley  where 
we  found  him. 

He  was  always  passionately  loyal  to  his 
adopted  country.  When  the  war  broke  out, 
he  answered  President  Lincoln's  call  gladly, 
and  fought  all  through  the  four  years,  and 
then  went  back  to  his  farm,  happy  in  the 
thought  that  he  had  done  what  he  could  to 
bring  the  reign  of  peace  on  earth  a  little  nearer. 
Another  instance  of  his  loyalty  was  that  from 
the  first  of  their  coming  to  this  country  he  and 
his  wife  talked  nothing  but  English,  and  he 
told  me  once  that  he  had  never  allowed  himself 
to  think  in  anything  but  English.  It  was  the 
first  language  they  taught  their  children. 

Of  course,  to  a  man  of  his  melancholy  sort 
of  idealism,  society,  as  it  was  in  Red  City  dur- 
ing the  early  copper  days,  was  painful.  With 
all  his  gentleness  and  his  theoretical  democracy, 
there  was  a  good  deal  of  the  old-fashioned  punc- 
tiliousness about  him.  He  expected  the  same 
courtesy  of  others  that  he  was  prepared  to  pay 
to  them,  and  the  free  and  easy  manners  of  the 
miners  at  Red  City  must  have  outraged  him 
exceedingly. 

That  was  bad  enough  twenty-five  miles 
away,  but  to  have  it  at  his  very  door-step, 

99 


Roger   Drake 

where  he  thought  our  strike  must  bring  it,  was 
a  misfortune  indeed. 

But  we  youngsters  who  had  just  made  the 
find  could  hardly  be  expected  to  think  of  that 
part  of  it.  We  were  as  happy  as  men  could 
be,  and  quite  rightly.  Our  find  proved  more 
valuable  even  than  it  had  looked  at  first,  as, 
of  course,  every  one  who  has  ever  heard  of  the 
Croesus,  as  we  named  it,  knows  very  well.  All 
we  had  to  do  was  to  break  the  stuff  up,  load  it 
on  small  rafts,  —  that  was  a  hint  we  took  from 
the  way  Father  Jansen  got  his  wheat  to  market, 
—  and  float  it  down  to  Red  City,  when  an  ore 
purchasing  and  refining  company  took  it  off 
our  hands,  and  put  our  money  in  the  bank. 
We  forgot  the  future  for  a  while  just  in  the 
pleasure  at  seeing  that  bank  account  grow. 

After  the  news  of  our  find  went  down  to 
Red  City,  of  course  there  was  a  rush  up  the 
river.  All  the  land  about  our  claim  was  alive 
with  prospectors  who  bored  and  bored,  but 
found  nothing  whatever.  Across  the  river,  in 
Jansen's  property,  prospecting  was  not  en- 
couraged. When  the  old  gentleman  found 
that  ferocious  signboards  were  not  effectual,  he 
had  a  man  patrol  the  place  with  a  shot-gun. 

As  to  ourselves,  when  he  found  that  we  didn't 
intend  to  roast  our  ores  on  the  place,  and  that 

100 


Roger   Drake 

we  kept  our  force  of  men  under  good  discipline, 
and  entirely  away  from  his  property,  he  ac- 
cepted the  situation  with  good  grace,  and  our 
friendly  relations  were  resumed  again. 

They  were  made  still  pleasanter  as  the  result 
of  a  plan  which  Stanley  executed.  We  took 
turns  going  down  to  Red  City,  and  one  July 
evening  when  he  returned  from  there,  he  called 
to  me  from  the  river,  saying  that  he  had  a  sur- 
prise for  me.  When  I  came  out  and  looked 
down  at  the  raft  which  he  and  three  sturdy 
laborers  had  poled  up  stream  that  day,  I  saw 
Mrs.  Stanley  and  Adele. 

I  need  not  try  to  tell  how  surprised  I  was, 
but  the  explanation  was  simple  enough.  Mrs. 
Stanley  had  not  been  very  well  during  the 
spring,  and  George,  who  said  that  the  dry, 
cool  air  of  Bent  River  Valley  would  be  good 
for  her,  and  that  he  hadn't  seen  her  to  much 
more  than  speak  to  for  about  four  years,  sug- 
gested that  she  come  out  and  visit  us  during 
the  summer,  and,  of  course,  bring  Adele  with 
her.  When  he  found  out  that  they  would  like 
to  come,  he  arranged  with  Father  Jansen  that 
they  should  live  with  him.  All  together  it 
seemed  like  an  ideal  arrangement  for  all  of  us. 

I  guess  it  proved  so  for  them  and  for  Stan- 
ley ;  they  stayed  until  September,  and  seemed 

101 


Roger   Drake 

to  be  very  enthusiastic  over  the  place,  and  very 
loath  to  go.  Stanley,  too,  was  as  happy  as  a 
clam  while  he  was  with  them,  though  his  good 
spirits  did  not  hold  over  very  well  when  he  was 
at  work  in  the  mine.  But  as  for  me,  the  long 
hours  I  hoped  to  have,  all  alone,  with  Adele, 
didn't  come  around  very  often.  There  was 
good  reason,  of  course,  why  I  should  be  held 
closer  to  my  work  than  Stanley,  for  I  was  the 
practical  man  in  the  partnership,  and  if  I  wasn't 
at  hand  when  a  question  arose  how  to  do  this 
or  that,  there  was  nobody  to  settle  it.  But 
when  I  did  get  off,  it  irritated  me  to  find  the 
circumstances  conspiring  to  prevent  my  taking 
Adele  away  by  herself;  Stanley,  I  reasoned, 
must  know  how  much  I  wanted  her,  and  his 
failure  to  help  me  fretted  me. 

But  then  I  could  often  see  her,  even  if  I 
couldn't  say  what  was  on  my  tongue,  and  after 
living  three  long  months  amid  mud  and  engine 
grease  and  sulphurous  profanity,  just  to  see  her 
beauty  was  a  delight.  After  my  day's  work,  to 
go  up  to  the  big  hall,  if  it  was  chilly,  or  out 
under  the  trees  near  the  house,  and  find  her 
there,  dressed  just  as  daintily  as  though  she 
were  at  home,  to  find  her  always  the  same 
exquisite  little  creature  she  had  always  been, 
was  like  a  realization  of  my  old  dreams.  When 


102 


Roger   Drake 

they  went  away,  driven  south  by  the  cold  of  the 
early  September,  I  felt  as  badly  as  though  th? 
summer  had  been  to  me  all  I  had  hoped  i- 
would  be  when  they  first  came. 

Much  as  I  hated  to  see  them  go,  I  had  a 
feeling  that  perhaps  the  mine  would  prosper 
better  with  them  away ;  that  even  so  rich  a 
strike  as  ours  might  not  go  on  paying  under 
the  half-hearted  attention  we  had  given  it  while 
they  were  with  us.  More  than  that,  I  hoped 
that  Stanley  and  I  would  get  on  better  now 
they  were  away,  and  that  our  old  friendly  feel- 
ing for  each  other  would  come  back. 

So  far  as  the  work  went  we  did  brace  up, 
and  made  up  for  whatever  we  may  have  lost 
while  something  so  much  more  attractive  than 
mining  was  right  at  hand.  Stanley  quite  out- 
did me;  for  there  was  just  the  difference  between 
us  that  there  is  between  what  my  boy  calls  a 
"sprinter"  and  a  long-distance  runner;  that 
was  true  of  us,  physically,  mentally,  morally, 
every  way. 

To  a  man  of  his  composition  the  way  we  were 
working,  the  way  our  days  went  by  without  any 
sort  of  unusual  incident,  was  harder  for  him  than 
for  me.  Whether  that  was  the  real  reason,  or 
something  else,  the  feeling  between  us  grew 
worse  instead  of  better.  It  was  partly  my  own 

103 


Roger  Drake 

fault,  for  I  was  not  in  the  mood  to  take  his  little 
bursts  of  temper  in  the  right  way,  and  instead 
of  waiting  for  them  to  blow  over,  as  they 
always  did,  I  stormed  more  or  less  myself,  and 
we  were  on  the  ragged  edge  of  a  real  quarrel 
most  of  the  time.  But  the  quarrel  was  not  to 
come  then,  and  this  is  how  it  was  avoided. 

It  was  the  evening  after  our  first  light  snow- 
fall, and  after  working  around  in  the  slush 
all  day  we  were  both  pretty  tired.  We  got 
through  supper  without  saying  a  word,  and 
after  that  he  lost  himself  in  a  kind  of  dream 
before  the  fire.  From  the  way  he  kicked  the 
logs  every  little  while  I  thought  it  best  not  to 
speak  to  him,  so  I  got  out  a  book  on  the 
chemistry  of  ores,  which  Fletcher  had  sent  me, 
and  began  reading.  At  last  he  knocked  the 
ashes  out  of  his  pipe  and  got  up. 

"  Damn  it,  Drake,"  said  he,  "  you  don't 
know  what  I'd  give  for  an  hour  or  so  now  and 
then  with  a  civilized  human  being.  I've  a 
mind  to  buy  Jansen's  jackass.  He'd  be  better 
company  than  you  are;  he'd  talk  just  as  much 
and  he  wouldn't  be  so  cursed  irritating." 

"  1  guess  that  even  an  ass  would  know  enough 
not  to  try  to  talk  to  you  in  the  temper  you've 
been  in  for  a  week,"  said  I.     "I'd  give  some- 
thing for  a  human  being  myself." 
104 


I   THOUGHT  IT  BEST  NOT  TO   SPEAK   TO   HIM." 


Roger  Drake 

"  We  could  remedy  things  with  a  set  of  box- 
ing-gloves," he  said  after  a  while.  "  I  wouldn't 
want  'em  too  heavy,  either.  If  it  wasn't  for 
the  idea  of  the  thing —  Look  here,  Drake, 
what  do  you  say  to  going  at  it  bare-handed  for 
a  round  or  two  ?  Right  here  and  now  ?  We'll 
both  feel  better  for  it." 

I  told  him  not  to  be  an  idiot,  and  went  on 
with  my  reading.  A  minute  or  two  later  the 
book  was  swept  out  of  my  hand,  and  I  looked 
up,  thinking  that  perhaps  we  should  have  to 
come  to  blows  about  it  after  all,  but  his  old 
smile  was  on  his  face  again,  and  he  was  holding 
out  his  hand. 

"I  beg  your  pardon,"  said  he.  "You  haven't 
any  need,  anyway,  of  another  jackass.  But  do 
you  know  what's  the  matter  with  both  of  us  ?  " 

"  No,  but  there's  something,  sure  enough, 
and  if  you've  found  it  out,  let's  hear  it." 

"  Well,  here's  the  trouble.  We're  two  young 
men  in  a  big  hurry  to  get  rich.  We've  got  the 
riches  right  in  sight,  just  waiting  to  be  carried 
off,  but  we're  picking  away  at  it  in  a  left-handed, 
one-horse,  narrow-gauge  sort  of  a  way,  as 
though  we  had  fifty  years  to  do  it  in.  It's 
enough  to  get  both  of  us  out  of  patience.  The 
thing  to  do  is  to  go  to  work  at  it  on  a  scale 
that's  worthy  of  the  strike  we've  made." 

105 


Roger   Drake 

Of  course  that  had  been  in  my  head  too.  I 
have  never  been  content  to  go  slow  when 
I  might  just  as  well  go  fast,  and  certainly  I 
wasn't  inclined  that  way  at  that  time  of  life. 
Our  puttering  and  scratching  away  at  the  end 
of  that  lode  instead  of  cutting  it  out  in  chunks 
was  as  hard  for  me  as  it  was  for  him,  or  harder, 
for  I  realized  better  than  he  what  uncounted 
wealth  was  bedded  in  the  rocks.  I  knew  the 
money  wouldn't  be  hard  to  get.  I  knew  just 
how  I'd  lay  it  out.  I  knew  just  the  best  way 
to  open  up  that  mine,  and  I  lay  awake  nights 
thinking  about  it.  But  against  all  that,  I  had 
one  reason  for  keeping  such  thoughts  to  my- 
self; a  reason  strong  enough  to  silence  even 
my  impatience.  And  I  believe  that  the  same 
reason,  which  was  nothing  less  than  a  sort  of 
foreknowledge  of  the  way  Adele  Broughton 
was  destined  to  come  between  us,  had  hitherto 
silenced  Stanley  also.  I  mean  that  I  think 
that  while  he  was  away  from  her  he  tried  to  be 
honest  to  me. 

But  the  subject  had  come  up  at  last  and 
wouldn't  be  downed.  "  Go  ahead,"  said  I. 
"Tell  me  more  about  it.  Where  do  you 
mean  to  get  the  money  to  put  us  through  ? " 

"  Come,  you  know  that  won't  be  hard,"  he 
said,  a  little  impatiently.  "  One  of  us  goes 
1 06 


Roger  Drake 

East,  incorporates  us,  and  then  we  float  a  small 
issue  of  bonds." 

"  Secured  by  ?  " 

"  Oh,  father  has  meant  all  along  to  give  us 
a  lift  when  the  time  came.  He  and  some  of 
his  friends'll  see  us  through.  Trust  me  for 
that.  Even  if  it  wasn't  a  sure  thing,  we  ought 
to  chance  it.  Think  how  the  river  will  play 
the  devil  with  us  if  it  gets  up  next  March  as 
high  as  it  was  last  spring,  unless  we  get  some 
more  protective  work  up." 

"  I  agree  with  you,"  said  I.  "  One  of  us  has 
got  to  go.  Which  one,  that's  the  question." 

He  turned  away  from  me,  and  taking  up  a 
fresh  log  balanced  it  carefully  on  the  top  of  the 
fire.  I  got  up  off  the  bunk  and  began  walking 
up  and  down  the  shanty.  Then  as  my  hands 
found  their  way  into  my  trousers  pockets,  I 
felt  the  big  copper  cent  Adele  had  given  me. 

"  Look  here,"  I  exclaimed.  "  Let  the  coin 
decide  it.  If  you  call  it  right,  you  go." 

He  shook  his  head.  "  Damn  it,  old  man,  I 
hate  to  be  a  cad  about  it,  but  there's  only  one 
way.  I  know  how  you  want  to  go,  and  I 
swear  I  wish  you  could,  but  don't  you  see  it 
wouldn't  do  ?  You're  the  man  who  can  run 
this  end  of  it  and  keep  everything  going  right, 
and  I  think  I  could  get  the  other  part  through 
107 


Roger  Drake 

oetter  than  you  could.  We'd  be  likely  to  fail 
at  both  ends  if  we  did  it  the  other  way." 

I  knew  he  was  right  about  it ;  there  wasn't 
a  shadow  of  an  argument  against  it,  but  I  paced 
back  and  forth  a  half  an  hour,  I  guess,  before 
I  could  get  what  I  wanted  to  say  to  my  tongue. 

"  All  right,"  I  said,  at  last.  "  Go  in  and 
win  ;  good  luck  to  you." 

He  held  out  his  hand,  and  I  took  it.  "  The 
sooner  the  better,  I  suppose,"  he  said. 

I  nodded,  and  when  he  asked,  "  To-mor- 
row ?  "  I  nodded  again. 

So  the  next  day  he  set  out  for  home,  some 
samples  of  that  beautiful  ore  in  his  bag.  I  was 
to  draw  up  as  complete  a  report  on  the  value 
of  the  property  as  was  possible  in  the  circum- 
stances, and  send  it  after  him.  I  said  I  would 
go  down  to  Red  City  about  once  a  month  to 
get  the  money  to  pay  the  men,  and  that  I 
would  time  my  visits  to  take  in  Thanksgiving 
Day  and  Christmas.  He  could  write  to  me, 
so  that  his  letters  would  reach  town  at  the 
same  time  that  I  did,  —  the  last  week  in  every 
month.  He  agreed  to  that,  and  then  with  the 
prophecy  that  by  spring  we'd  be  working  the 
mine  for  all  it  was  worth,  he  went  away. 

I  had  a  lot  to  do,  and  I  really  enjoyed  those 
next  few  weeks  immensely.  I  took  a  hint 
108 


tf 

Roger  Drake 

from  that  early  snowfall ;  and  though  we  were 
barely  into  November,  I  put  all  hands  to  work 
getting  things  ready  for  winter.  We  aban- 
doned the  straggling  little  shanties,  which  had 
been  scattered  all  over  the  place,  and  built  two 
or  three  substantial  log  houses  across  the  river 
where  the  cliff  formed  a  barrier  against  the 
north  wind.  We  built  quite  a  system  of  sheds 
to  protect  the  open  face  of  our  working  from 
being  choked  with  snow ;  we  reenforced  the 
embankment  so  that  no  ordinary  ice-jam  should 
cave  it  in,  and  no  ordinary  freshet  should  rise 
above  it,  and  besides  all  that,  first,  last,  and  all 
the  time,  we  cut  timber,  sawed  it,  and  stacked 
it  around  our  barracks. 

It  was  pleasanter  with  Stanley  away.  There 
was  no  doubt  of  that,  so  long,  at  least,  as  I  could 
keep  from  thinking  where  he  was.  The  men 
worked  better  for  me  than  for  him ;  for  some 
reason  I  have  always  got  on  well  with  my  men 
—  particularly  with  the  rank  and  file,  the  fellows 
who  get  paid  by  the  day.  That's  not  boasting, 
for  I  don't  know  what  quality  it  is  in  a  man  that 
makes  his  people  like  him.  The  worst  man  I 
know  in  business,  the  greatest  rascal,  take  him 
at  big  things  or  at  little,  is  one  of  the  most  suc- 
cessful in  dealing  with  his  employees. 

However  that  may  be,  it  makes  life  a  good 
109 


Roger  Drake 

deal  pleasanter  if  the  men  who  are  working  for 
you  are  doing  it  with  a  good  will ;  and  I  found 
it  so  during  those  snappy,  frosty  November 
days  when  we  were  all  doing  our  best  to  get 
things  snug  and  tight  and  ready  for  the  first 
norther. 

I  saw  a  good  deal  of  the  Jansens,  for  at  that 
time  of  year  a  farmer  hasn't  much  to  do.  The 
boy,  Gus,  put  in  a  good  deal  of  his  spare  time 
working  with  us,  just  for  the  fun  of  the  thing. 
He  was  particularly  interested  in  what  little 
machinery  we  had.  There  wasn't  much  beside 
our  pumping  outfit,  and  I  taught  him  how  to 
run  that.  He  took  something  of  a  liking  to 
me,  and  when  I  was  starting  down  for  Red  City, 
along  toward  the  end  of  the  month,  he  wanted 
to  go  with  me,  but  his  father  had  something 
else  to  do  at  the  time,  so  he  put  it  off". 

I  found  a  letter  from  Stanley  waiting  for  me 
at  the  post-office,  but  nothing  from  Adele, 
though  as  Stanley's  letter  spoke  of  her  in  a 
matter-of-course  way,  I  knew  nothing  could 
be  wrong  with  her.  He  seemed  very  hope- 
ful about  getting  our  deal  through,  and  spoke 
of  the  progress  he'd  made,  but  he  didn't  go 
into  details,  and  I  went  back  to  the  camp  none 
too  well  pleased  with  the  result  of  my  journey. 

Things  went  on  after  that  in  a  routine  way 
no 


Roger  Drake 

until  just  before  Christmas,  when  the  first  of 
the  big  winter  storms  struck  us.  It  made  up 
for  being  so  late  by  being  much  more  severe 
than  anything  that  had  come  along  for  several 
seasons  before,  and  well  prepared  as  we  thought 
we  were,  it  played  the  mischief  with  our  arrange- 
ments. What  with  the  days  we  were  storm- 
bound, and  then  the  time  it  took  to  make 
necessary  repairs,  it  was  the  first  week  in 
January  before  I  started  down  to  Red  City. 
Luckily  as  it  proved,  young  Jansen  went 
with  me. 

Of  course  when  we  reached  town  the  first 
place  we  went  to  was  the  post-office.  The 
clerk  handed  me  two  letters,  and  as  he  did, 
he  said :  — 

"  You've  come  just  in  time  for  one  of  them. 
I  put  it  in  your  box  not  three  minutes  ago." 

The  upper  one  was  from  Stanley,  and  from 
the  amount  of  dust  on  it,  as  well  as  from  the 
postmark,  I  knew  it  had  been  there  some  time, 
so  I  looked  at  the  other.  It  was  from  Adele, 
and  just  for  an  instant  I  wondered  why  she  had 
written  it  then,  when  she  must  think  I  shouldn't 
be  coming  for  it  for  about  a  month.  It  was 
thicker  than  Stanley's  letter,  so  I  opened  his 
first. 

It  was  barely  three  lines  long;  there  was  just 
in 


Roger   Drake 

enough  to  say  that  everything  was  going  well, 
but  that  he  didn't  know  when  he'd  be  through  ; 
probably  not  till  spring.  I  wondered  a  little  at 
that  again,  and  there  was  some  fear  mixed  up 
in  it,  that  something  was  wrong.  So  instead  of 
waiting  until  we  had  got  to  the  hotel,  as  I  had 
meant  to  do,  before  reading  her  letter,  I  tore  it 
open  there  in  the  post-office.  It  was  stormy 
and  getting  on  in  the  afternoon,  and  there 
wasn't  much  light,  so  I  went  over  near  the 
window. 

The  first  words  reassured  me,  for  they  were 
a  playful  little  nickname  she  had  made  up  for 
me,  and  it  always  meant  that  she  was  in  good 
humor  with  me.  For  the  first  page  or  two  I 
saw  nothing  unnatural  about  it,  but  as  it  went 
on,  it  sounded  less  and  less  like  her.  It  was 
longer  than  any  other  letter  she  had  written 
me;  it  was  more  entertaining,  —  if  that  is  the 
right  word  to  use,  —  and  there  were  phrases  in 
it  that  I  couldn't  imagine  her  saying ;  so,  as  I 
read  on  in  the  failing  light,  the  feeling  that  had 
caused  me  to  open  it  came  back,  and  even  be- 
fore I  reached  the  last  paragraph,  I  felt  that 
something  was  wrong. 

The  letter  was  destroyed  years  ago,  but  I  can 
remember  that  paragraph  yet  almost  word  for 
word.  "And  now,  dear,"  it  read,  "I  must 

112 


Roger   Drake 

hurt  you  very  much.  You  mustn't  ask  me 
any  more  when  I'll  be  married.  You  mustn't 
even  say  to  yourself  that  I'm  engaged  to  you, 
though  you  can  go  on  being  engaged  to  me  if 
you  like.  But  let  me  be  free  and  go  on  think- 
ing about  you  in  the  old  way,  and  then,  maybe, 
when  you  come  back  I'll  be  sure,  and  will  agree 
to  be  married  as  soon  as  you  like.  But  we 
aren't  engaged  any  more." 

I  turned  back  to  the  beginning  of  it,  and 
would  have  read  it  through  again,  but  Jansen 
took  me  by  the  arm.  "  It's  getting  late,"  he 
said ;  "  the  bank'll  be  closed  if  we  don't  go." 

So  I  started  along  with  him,  and  on  the  way 
I  made  my  plan.  When  we  had  drawn  the 
money,  I  handed  it  over  to  him.  "Jansen," 
said  I,  "  I've  got  to  go  away.  I  want  you  to 
take  this  money  to  your  father.  Ask  him  to 
pay  the  men,  and  keep  an  eye  on  the  place  till 
I  get  back.  And  tell  him  to  hire  you  to  run 
the  pumping  engine.  I'll  be  back  before  the 
end  of  the  month." 

He  looked  at  me  in  amazement,  but  I  hadn't 
any  time  to  explain.  I  drew  out  enough  money 
for  my  own  needs,  and  by  running  caught  the 
afternoon  train  down  to  the  junction  with  the 
main  line  at  Bridgetown.  About  midnight  I 
was  spinning  along  East  again. 
i  113 


Roger  Drake 

So  it  came  about  that  at  a  little  after  four  in 
the  afternoon,  ten  days  at  least  before  Adele 
could  have  expected  me  to  receive  her  letter, 
I  rang  the  Stanleys'  door-bell.  She  herself 
opened  the  door,  and  I  remember  thinking  of 
that  as  a  sort  of  good  omen. 

She  opened  it  impetuously,  as  though  she 
had  been  expecting  some  one,  and  when  she 
saw  me,  she  uttered  an  involuntary  exclamation 
of  surprise ;  then  as  she  looked  at  me  and  rec- 
ognized me,  in  the  failing  January  twilight,  she 
made  another  little  exclamation  which  sounded 
more  like  fear  than  anything  else. 

"  Is  that  all  my  welcome,  Adele  ?  "  I  asked, 
and  then,  stepping  quickly  into  the  hall,  I 
lifted  her  up  in  my  arms  and  kissed  her. 

"  Don't,"  she  said  breathlessly.  "  There 
are  people  right  in  the  drawing-room.  Come 
—  come  up  to  the  library." 

"  That's  better,"  said  I,  and  I  followed  her 
up  the  stairs.  I  had  never  before  seen  her 
any  way  but  perfectly  self-possessed,  and  her 
agitation  seemed  to  me  a  good  sign  too.  When 
I  closed  the  library  door  after  me,  I  thought 
my  battle  would  be  soon  won. 

She  fumbled  about  for  matches,  for  the  room 
was   darkening,   but   could   find   none,   so   she 
asked  me  to  make  a  light. 
114 


Roger   Drake 

"  This  light  is  all  we  need,  I  guess,"  said  I, 
and  I  drew  her  down  on  the  sofa  beside  me. 

It  was  a  little  while  before  she  spoke,  and  I 
could  feel  her  heart  beating  like  mad  under  my 
hand.  "  I  didn't  know  you  were  coming,"  she 
said,  at  last,  as  evenly  as  she  could.  "  I  wrote 
you  a  letter." 

"  I  got  the  letter.    That's  why  I  came  to  you." 

She  moved  uneasily  in  my  arms,  and  I  let 
her  go.  "You  mustn't  do  that  any  more," 
she  said.  "  We  aren't  engaged  now.  I  thought 
you  didn't  know."  She  drew  a  little  farther 
away  from  me.  "  What  made  you  do  it  when 
you  knew  we  weren't  engaged  ?  You  had  no 
right  to  do  it.  You  had  no  right  to  come  back 
at  all.  Why  did  you  come  back  ?  " 

"  I  came  back  to  marry  you,  Adele ;  to  marry 
you  to-morrow,  and  to  take  my  wife  back  to 
the  camp  with  me.  I  have  it  all  thought  out. 
We  can  live  at  the  Jansens'  until  I  can  get  our 
house  ready  for  you.  And  then,  Adele,  and 
then  what  a  honeymoon  we  shall  have  out  in 
the  snow !  " 

But  she  held  her  hands  over  her  ears  to  shut 
my  words  out.  "  Don't  talk  to  me  any  more," 
she  cried.  "  You  have  no  right  to  say  such 
things  to  me.  Oh,  you  are  a  coward  to  say 
such  things ! " 

"5 


Roger  Drake 

"Adele,"  said  I,  quickly,  "you  promise! 
once  that  you  would  marry  me.  If  you  didn't 
do  it  in  words,  you  did  it  with  your  lips.  And 
now  you  want  to  throw  aside  your  promise.  I 
will  release  you.  But  you  must  hear  my  side 
of  it  first.  Did  you  think  that  I  would  lose 
the  most  beautiful  woman  in  the  world  without 
a  word  or  a  sign,  just  for  a  line  or  two  across  a 
bit  of  paper  ?  " 

She  shivered  as  though  she  was  cold,  though 
her  hands,  when  I  took  them,  were  burning. 
I  held  them  in  both  of  mine,  and  she  did  not 
try  to  get  them  away.  I  said  nothing  more 
till  she  was  a  little  quieter.  Then  I  began  to 
talk  to  her. 

I  told  her  how  since  I  had  read  her  letter,  it 
had  been  every  moment,  sleeping  and  waking 
almost,  in  my  thoughts ;  how  at  first  it  had 
puzzled  me,  as  being  so  unlike  her,  but  gradu- 
ally I  had  come  to  understand  it.  I  told  her 
that  I  saw  two  reasons  why  she  had  written 
that  last  paragraph,  and  that  the  first  made  me 
only  love  her  better,  and  the  second  made  me 
love  her  none  the  worse.  I  told  her  what  the 
reasons  were,  and  as  I  talked,  her  hands  relaxed 
in  mine,  and  she  let  me  draw  nearer  her  again 
on  the  sofa. 

"  Have  you  ever  thought,  Adele,  how  short 
116 


Roger  Drake 

a  time  we  have  ever  had  together  as  lovers? 
There  were  two  long  years  when  we  saw  each 
other  as  friends,  and  thought  of  each  other  as 
nothing  more  than  that.  But  it  was  only  two 
short  months  after  that  night  when  you  let  me 
kiss  you  that  I  went  away,  and  there  were  so 
few  hours  in  that  time  that  we  could  call  our 
own.  And  out  at  the  camp  last  summer  it 
was  much  the  same.  For  the  rest  of  the  time 
you  have  only  had  my  letters,  and  I  couldn't 
make  them  carry  my  love  to  you.  And  so, 
while  I  was  a  long  way  off,  you  have  thought 
about  me  as  your  friend  and  not  your  lover,  and 
that  has  made  you  doubt  yourself,  and  you  were 
honest  enough  to  tell  me  so." 

She  did  not  answer,  but  her  hands  lay  con- 
tentedly in  mine,  and  seemed  to  say  that  I  had 
understood  her  aright.  So  I  went  on  more 
confidently  than  before.  "  That  was  the  main 
reason,  I  think,  but  there  was  another  one, 
wasn't  there  ?  I  think  our  little  beginning 
at  a  mine,  with  its  rough  shanties  and  poor 
tools,  looked  to  you  like  poverty,  and  you  are 
afraid  of  poverty.  You're  right  to  be  that. 
You  have  never  felt  it,  and  it  would  be  terrible 
to  you.  But  I  shall  be  rich,  Adele.  I  shall 
not  only  die  a  rich  man,  I  shall  live  a  rich  man. 
It  may  not  seem  to  you  that  I  have  got  very 
117 


Roger   Drake 

far  along  the  road  yet.  Well,  I  knew  what  I 
wanted  four  years  ago,  and  how  to  get  at  it. 
Every  step  I've  taken  since  has  brought  me 
that  much  nearer  it.  You  needn't  be  afraid  of 
poverty,  Adele.  I  know  it  as  well  as  though 
I  owned  a  box  full  of  government  bonds  to- 
day. So  there  are  your  two  reasons  answered. 
It  isn't  good  for  us  to  be  apart,  and  that  is  why 
I  came  back  to  marry  you.  Will  you  do  it, 
Adele  ? " 

We  were  silent  a  long  while.  I  was  in  no 
hurry  for  her  answer  so  long  as  she  sat  there 
so  quietly  and  so  close  to  me.  At  last  she 
started  to  speak. 

But  what  her  answer  would  have  been  I  do 
not  know,  for  before  she  could  get  out  more 
than  a  word,  we  heard  some  one  coming  up  the 
stairs.  Both  of  us  knew  who  it  was. 

She  shrank  away  from  me,  and  sat  for  just 
one  instant,  breathing  like  a  person  in  terror. 
Then  she  turned  upon  me.  "  Quick,  quick, 
light  the  gas  !  "  she  commanded. 

I  knew  then,  as  at  the  bottom  of  my  heart 
I  had  known  before,  that  those  reasons  I  had 
been  giving  her  were  hollow  as  egg-shells,  and 
I  knew  what  the  true  reason  was.  I  did  not 
obey  her,  but  simply  sat  where  I  was  and 
waited.  She  fumbled  over  the  table  for  an 


-* 

Roger   Drake 

instant,  and  then  ran  to  the  door,  and  flung  it 
open  just  as  he  was  coming  down  the  hall. 

"  You  didn't  meet  me  at  the  other  door, 
Adele,"  said  he,  "  but  this  is  —  " 

"  He's  come,"  she  broke  in  hoarsely,  "  he's 
in  here." 

I  have  sometimes  wondered  since  why  Stan- 
ley took  the  course  he  did ;  whether  he  saw 
from  her  tear-stained  face  and  her  manner  that 
I  had  shaken  his  hold  on  her,  and  thought  that 
the  best  way  to  regain  it,  or  whether  he  hated 
me  because  he  knew  he  had  dealt  with  me  dis- 
honestly. Anyway,  from  that  moment  he  was 
a  reckless,  defiant  enemy. 

There  was  a  dead  silence  for  a  moment. 
Then  he  laughed,  and  said,  as  much  for  my 
ears  as  for  hers,  "  I  didn't  know  the  old  snail 
could  move  so  fast." 

Then  they  came  back  into  the  room.  He 
lighted  the  gas,  then  turned  and  looked  me  over. 
"  I  suppose  you  thought  that  manner  of  dress 
picturesque,"  he  said,  smiling.  I  became  aware 
then,  for  the  first  time,  that  I  was  dressed  just 
as  I  had  been  when  I  started  down  to  Red  City. 
We  didn't  dress  up  much  to  go  to  Red  City, 
either.  I  didn't  answer  the  question. 

"Well,"  he  said,  "that  isn't  at  all  what  I 
wish  to  know.  I'd  like  to  know  what  you  are 

119 


Roger   Drake 

doing  here.  I  left  you  to  look  out  for  some 
property  of  mine,  and  you  have  come  away  and 
left  it.  Miss  Broughton  has  written  you  a 
letter  telling  you,  in  effect,  that  she  no  longer 
cares  to  have  you  about,  but  here  you  are." 

"  I'll  explain  how  and  why  I  left  the  mine, 
when  the  time  comes,"  said  I.  "  Why  I  am 
here  with  your  cousin  Adele  is,  I  think,  no  con- 
cern of  yours."  Then  I  turned  to  Adele.  "  Is 
it  any  concern  of  his  ?  "  I  asked.  "Is  there 
any  reason  why  I  owe  that  explanation  to  him, 
more  than  to  any  other  man  ?  " 

She  stood  between  us,  biting  her  lips,  look- 
ing first  at  one  of  us,  and  then  at  the  other, 
but  saying  no  word  to  either.  Stanley  came  to 
her  help  at  last. 

"He  has  no  right  to  question  you.  You 
have  answered  him  so  far  as  he  is  concerned." 
So  much  to  her ;  then  he  turned  to  me. 
"  Generosity  to  some  people  is  a  great  mistake, 
and  you're  one  of  them.  It  seems  that  the 
use  you  made  of  the  help  I  gave  you  was  to 
come  here  to  my  father's  house,  and  make  love 
to  Miss  Broughton  on  false  pretences.  You 
neglected  to  tell  her,  I  think,  that  when  I  picked 
you  up,  you  were  a  barber." 

"  You,  at  least,  did  not  neglect  to  tell  her," 
said  I.  Then  I  said  to  Adele,  "  I  don't  know 


izo 


Roger   Drake 

how  many  other  lies  he  has  told  you  about  me, 
or  how  much  he  has  made  you  believe.  If  they 
were  true,  he  would  have  told  you  a  year  and 
more  ago.  As  for  himself,  you  know  for  how 
many  years  he  called  himself  my  friend ;  you 
know  how  much  each  of  us  had  to  bind  him 
to  loyalty  to  the  other.  In  these  last  few 
minutes,  if  never  before,  he's  been  showing  you 
what  his  peculiar  stripe  of  loyalty  is.  I  don't 
know  whether  he  has  tried  to  convince  you  that 
he  is  your  lover  or  not,  but  if  he  has,  if  he's 
been  telling  you  that  he'll  be  loyal  and  true  to 
you  for  always,  you'll  do  well  to  remember  how 
loyal  he  proved  himself  to  me." 

He  broke  in  on  me  then,  and  stormed  and 
threatened  and  ordered  me  out  of  the  house, 
but  I  would  not  stir.  I  kept  my  eyes  on  Adele, 
waiting  for  her  to  answer  me.  She  said  nothing, 
so  at  last  I  spoke  to  her  again.  I  told  her 
that  I  would  not  give  her  up ;  that  I  believed 
she  cared  for  me  still,  that  all  the  evil  she 
thought  of  me  had  been  put  into  her  mind  by 
my  enemy,  who  while  he  libelled  me  to  her  was 
writing  me  letters  on  terms  of  friendship.  At 
last  I  spoke  of  her  own  letter  to  me,  and  how 
she  had  held  out  the  hope  in  it  that  she  might 
again  be  sure  she  cared  for  me. 

Stanley  laughed  aloud  when  I  spoke  of  the 

121 


Roger  Drake 

letter,  and  interrupted  me.  "  I  wouldn't  go  into 
that  letter  any  farther,"  he  said.  "It  was  meant 
to  let  you  down  easy ;  to  keep  you  quiet  and 
out  of  the  way  for  the  time  being.  It  seems  it 
was  stupidly  done,  for  it  has  brought  about 
just  what  it  was  meant  to  avoid." 

"  You  seem  sure  of  your  interpretation." 
"  I   ought  to  be ;  I   wrote   the  letter.      Or 
rather  Adele  and  I  made  a  lark  of  it,  and  wrote 
it  together." 

"  Is  that  true,  Adele  ?  "  I  asked. 
"  Yes,"  she  said  defiantly,  "  it  is." 
I  closed  my  eyes  and  I  could  see  the  pic- 
ture.    The  pair  of  them  sitting    there  at  the 
library  table,  concocting  that  letter,  weighing  its 
phrases,  and  calculating  them  to  keep  me  quiet, 
and  making  a  lark  of  it.     Then  I  walked  over 
to  the  door,  and  Stanley  followed  me. 

"  I  want  to  get  clear  of  you,"  said  I. 
"You  and  your  lawyer  can  decide  on  the  best 
way  to  do  it.  He  can  find  me  at  Fletcher's. 
I've  got  that  and  this  much  more  to  say  to  you. 
You've  been  my  enemy  while  you  called  your- 
self my  friend.  You  know  enough  of  me,  I 
guess,  to  know  where  to  count  on  me.  If  ever 
I  get  you  under  my  feet, — and  I  mean  to  some 
day,  —  I  shall  tramp  hard." 


122 


CHAPTER  VI 

I  SPENT  the  night  with  Fletcher,  and  we 
talked  till  morning.  It  was  like  him  to  ask 
no  questions.  He  must  have  seen  that  some- 
thing extraordinary  had  happened ;  he  must  have 
guessed,  or  half  guessed,  what  had  brought  me 
East,  but  he  was  so  far  from  showing  any  curi- 
osity that  I,  who  was  only  waiting  for  the  op- 
portunity to  tell  him  all  about  it,  did  not  get 
to  it  till  toward  the  end  of  the  night.  In  the 
meantime  he  seemed  absorbingly  interested  in 
the  new  mine,  not  only  in  a  general  way  —  he 
wanted  to  know  the  precise  strike  and  pitch  of 
the  lode  and  just  how  the  ore  bodies  occurred. 
After  I'd  exhausted  that  subject  he  changed 
over  to  his  armature  and  expounded  the  mathe- 
matical principle  of  induced  currents  for  a 
couple  of  hours. 

I  didn't  see  just  what  he  was  driving  at  then, 
but  I've  figured  it  out  since  that  he  saw  I'd  just 
come  through  something  that  had  shaken  me 
and  left  me  greatly  excited,  and  that  he  put  me 
through  all  that  geology  and  mathematics  to 
steady  me.  It  served  his  purpose,  if  that  was 
123 


Roger  Drake 

his  purpose ;  for  when  I  did  come  to  tell  him 
the  whole  story,  beginning  way  back  with  my 
engagement  to  Adele,  I  found  I  had  myself 
well  in  hand  again. 

Before  I  got  through  with  the  story  he  was 
angrier  than  I  was.  Strangely  enough,  I  was 
hardly  angry  at  all.  That  was  to  come  later. 
I  suppose  there  were  so  many  emotions  at  work 
in  me  that  for  the  time  they  neutralized  each 
other  and  left  me  without  feeling  anything. 

Stanley's  lawyer  came  to  see  me  the  first 
thing  next  morning.  He  had  a  paper  drawn 
up  all  ready  for  my  signature,  which  shows  that 
Stanley  must  have  been  in  as  great  a  hurry  as 
I  was.  It  was  a  formal  dissolution  of  partner- 
ship, and  I  was  to  relinquish  my  share  in  all 
our  joint  properties  for  ten  thousand  dollars. 
You  could  hardly  call  that  a  liberal  bargain,  for 
it  was  but  little  more  than  half  of  our  actual 
cash  balance  in  the  bank  at  that  moment  — 
that  will  give  any  one  who  stops  to  think  an 
idea  of  what  a  wonderful  strike  the  Crresus  was 
—  and  of  course  by  holding  out  I  could  have 
made  a  vastly  better  bargain.  I  should  act 
very  differently  now,  for  I  have  learned  with 
the  years  that  it  doesn't  work  well  to  mix  your 
personal  sentiments  with  your  business  sense, 
but  I  was  still  young  in  those  days.  I  had 
124 


Roger   Drake 

talked  pretty  big  to  Stanley  when  I  left  him  in 
the  library,  and  now  in  much  the  same  spirit  I 
signed  my  name  without  a  word,  accepted  the 
check  for  the  money,  and  gave  a  receipt  for  it. 
The  whole  business  was  done  in  ten  minutes. 

"  There,"  I  said  to  the  lawyer,  "  that's  like 
getting  into  the  fresh  air  again.  Good 
morning." 

I  bowed  him  out  and  went  upstairs,  and 
found  Fletcher  in  his  shop.  "  Well,  it's  over 
and  I'm  off  again,"  said  I. 

He  asked  me  where  I  meant  to  go,  and  I 
told  him  back  to  Red  City. 

"  You  don't  need  to  go  way  out  there  for 
your  things,  do  you  ?  "  he  asked.  "  Wouldn't 
your  friends  the  Jansens  ship  them  to  you  ?  " 

"  I'm  going  out  to  stay,"  said  I. 

It  was  a  long  time  before  he  said  anything  to 
that,  but  I  could  see  in  his  face  that  he  was 
disappointed. 

"  I  had  a  fancy,"  he  said  at  last,  "  that  per- 
haps you  had  changed  your  aim  a  little  in  the 
last  two  years.  You  never  seemed  to  me  like 
the  other  men  I've  known,  who  were  devoting 
their  lives  just  to  piling  up  —  piling  up  the 
fortunes.  That's  well  enough  for  men  who 
haven't  the  mind  or  the  heart  for  anything 
better,  but  you  have." 

125 


Roger   Drake 

He  took  me  a  little  by  surprise,  and  I  asked 
him  what  that  had  to  do  with  my  going  to  Red 
City. 

"  Why,"  said  he,  "  you  must  answer  that 
yourself.  Isn't  it  a  sort  of  battle-ground  of 
society  ?  Isn't  every  man's  hand  against  every 
one  else  ?  Isn't  any  sort  of  fraud  that  succeeds 
considered  smart  ?  Is  there  a  grain  of  real 
honesty  in  the  whole  place  ?  Is  there  an  influ- 
ence there  to  teach  a  man  to  take  care  of  the 
weak  ?  I've  been  about  those  places,  though 
I  don't  know  them  as  well  as  you  do.  But  I 
leave  the  answer  to  you." 

"  It's  not  a  very  nice  place,"  said  I,  "  though 
I  don't  know  that  it's  quite  so  bad  as  that.  But 
I'm  convinced  it's  the  place  for  me  to  succeed 
the  way  I  want  to  succeed.  I  want  my  pile. 
If  I  don't  make  it,  I  shan't  feel  that  I've  suc- 
ceeded. When  I've  made  it,  I  hope  to  do  some 
good  with  it.  Perhaps  I  can  leave  Red  City 
better  than  I  found  it.  But  in  the  meantime 
I  mean  to  get  rich  there  —  or  thereabout." 

"You'll  do  it  against  odds,  then.  You've  an 
enemy  there,  —  or  rather,  two  of  them.  You 
may  forgive  Adele  Broughton  and  George 
Stanley  some  day,  but  you  can  be  sure  they'll 
never  forgive  you." 

It  seems  a  little  strange  that  Fletcher,  who 
126 


Roger   Drake 

knew  so  little  of  men,  should  have  made  a 
prophecy  which  was  to  prove  so  true.  I  didn't 
think  much  about  it  at  the  time,  however,  and 
on  the  noon  train  I  started  back  to  Red  City. 

Naturally,  the  first  thing  I  did  when  I 
arrived  was  to  get  a  horse  and  ride  up  to  the 
Croesus.  It  was  a  hard  ride  at  best  in  winter, 
and  I  was  a  whole  day  making  the  twenty-five 
miles ;  so  when  I  reached  the  mine  and  found 
it  too  dark  to  do  anything,  I  rode  on  to  the 
Jansens'  to  spend  the  night  with  them. 

They  were  glad  enough  to  see  me,  for  my 
sudden  bolt  East  had  mystified  them  greatly, 
and  the  responsibility  for  the  mine  had  rested 
heavily  on  the  older  man's  shoulders,  though 
I  think  the  youngster  had  enjoyed  it.  My 
first  explanations  were  rather  brief;  I  merely 
told  them  that  imperative  business  had  called 
me  East,  and  that  I  was  no  longer  interested 
in  the  Croesus,  having  sold  out  my  share  in  it 
to  Stanley.  Both  father  and  son  looked  rather 
glum  at  that,  and  Gus  was  inclined  to  ask 
questions,  but  the  old  gentleman  repressed  his 
own  curiosity,  and  suppressed  his  son's,  so  we 
got  through  supper  and  the  first  part  of  the 
evening  rather  silently. 

After  Gus  had  gone  to  bed,  Father  Jansen 
and  I  drew  up  to  the  fire,  for  it  was  dying 
127 


Roger  Drake 

down  and  the  room  growing  chilly,  and  lighted 
up  our  pipes.  There  was  nothing  to  talk 
about,  but  I  was  aware  that  he  kept  looking 
from  me  to  the  fire,  and  back  to  me  again  in 
an  abstracted  way,  as  though  something  was  on 
his  mind.  At  last  he  spoke. 

"  You  will  allow  a  liberty  to  an  old  man,  I 
know,"  he  said.  "  Since  you  came  to-night  I 
have  always  been  reading  your  face,  and  I  can 
see  the  marks  of  a  great  trouble  in  it.  I  do 
not  ask  you  to  tell  me  what  it  is,  but  you  are 
my  friend,  and  I  ask  you  to  tell  me  if  I  can 
help  you." 

I  said  no,  that  there  was  no  help  for  it,  and 
then,  after  sitting  silent  a  while  longer,  I  told 
him  in  a  few  words  pretty  much  the  whole 
story.  He  said  nothing,  but  nodded  thought- 
fully, and  after  a  few  minutes  bade  me  good 
night. 

Next  morning  I  rode  down  to  the  Croesus 
and  packed  up  my  traps.  As  I  rode  off  the 
claim,  I  realized  for  the  first  time  what  an  ass  I 
had  been  to  part  with  my  share  in  it  for  such  a 
meagre  mess  of  pottage  as  ten  thousand  dollars 
was,  compared  with  the  value  of  the  property. 
It  was  a  pretty  costly  lesson  not  to  talk  big  and 
act  like  the  hero  of  a  story-book,  but  I  guess  I 
learned  it  then,  once  and  for  all. 
128 


Roger  Drake 

When  I  was  riding  back  to  Red  City,  some- 
where about  half-way  I  met  a  party  on  horse- 
back, all  strangers  except  the  fellow  guiding 
them,  who  was  an  old  resident,  as  old  residents 
went  in  the  town.  I  nodded  to  him  as  we 
passed,  and  he  must  have  told  them  who  I  was, 
for  one  of  the  party,  evidently  the  leader,  called 
to  me  by  name,  before  I  was  well  by,  to  stop. 

As  I  turned  in  the  saddle,  he  asked  me 
rather  sharply  where  I'd  been. 

"  I  may  tell  you,"  said  I,  "  when  I  know  any 
good  reason  why  you  should  ask  me." 

"  I'm  the  manager  of  Mr.  Stanley's  mine," 
he  snapped.  "  I  want  to  know  what  you  have 
in  those  saddle-bags." 

"  Nothing  that  concerns  you  in  the  least," 
said  I,  starting  my  horse  again. 

"  One  moment,  Mr.  Drake.  I  have  a  mes- 
sage for  you  from  Mr.  Stanley."  I  stopped 
again.  "He  hardly  expected  I  should  find 
you  here  so  soon,  but  said  if  I  ever  saw  you 
about,  to  tell  you  you'd  find  it  more  profitable 
to  continue  your  sort  of  operations  somewhere 
else  than  in  Bent  River  Valley." 

I  nodded  and  rode  along  to  town.  At  least, 
I  wasn't  the  only  one  silly  enough  to  talk  big. 

I  took  a  room  in  a  decent  boarding-house, 
stowed  away  my  traps,  and  that  evening  I  went 

K  129 


Roger  Drake 

around  to  the  superintendent  of  the  Red  City 
Ore  Company  and  asked  him  for  a  job. 

I  don't  believe  I  ever  saw  a  man  more  sur- 
prised than  he  was  when  he  finally  got  what  I 
wanted  through  his  head. 

"You  don't  mean  to  say  the  Croesus  has 
pinched  out  ?  "  he  asked.  I  told  him  the  mine 
was  all  right,  but  that  I  didn't  own  any  share 
of  it. 

"  But  you  ought  to  have  got  rich  selling  out," 
he  said,  still  incredulous. 

I  laughed.  "  I'm  here  asking  you  for  a  job," 
said  I.  "Judge  for  yourself."  Then  I  went 
on  to  tell  him  what  I  knew  practically  and  theo- 
retically about  assaying  and  smelting,  and  the 
upshot  of  our  talk  was  that  he  would  take  me 
on  in  the  smelter,  though  as  work  was  slack  in 
the  winter,  he  couldn't  pay  me  very  much. 

I  left  him  still  much  mystified  over  the  change 
in  my  fortunes,  but  coming  to  the  opinion,  which 
for  sometime  afterward  prevailed  in  Red  City, 
that  I  was  a  simple  sort  of  chap  who  had  been 
"  done "  out  of  my  share  in  the  Croesus  by 
some  cute  trick  of  Stanley's.  I  needn't  say  to 
anybody  who  knows  that  kind  of  a  community 
that  the  notion  raised  Stanley  in  the  general 
estimation,  and  lowered  me.  If  I  had  been  the 
victim  of  some  disaster,  had  got  hurt  in  an  ac- 
130 


Roger  Drake 

cident,  or  burned  out  by  fire,  I  could  have 
counted  on  sympathy,  and,  what  is  more,  on 
substantial  help,  from  plenty  of  my  fellow- 
townsmen,  but  to  look  for  anything  of  that 
kind  on  account  of  having  been  swindled  was 
to  make  an  enormous  mistake. 

All  that  was  rather  to  my  advantage  than 
otherwise ;  for  until  I  had  the  game  well  in  my 
own  hands,  I  wanted  to  remain  as  inconspicu- 
ous as  possible.  You  may  work  successfully 
under  our  modern  conditions  with  the  aid  of  a 
very  great  noise,  keeping  your  sayings  and  do- 
ings, your  horses,  your  dogs,  your  yachts,  even 
your  affection  for  your  wife,  before  people's  eyes 
and  in  their  mouths  as  much  as  possible ;  but 
that  is  not  the  only  way,  and  for  my  part,  I 
have  always  preferred  the  other.  At  any  rate, 
mum  was  the  word  for  me  in  those  days. 

It  was  easy  enough  to  see  that  the  town 
gave  promise  of  great  prosperity,  but  as  yet 
there  was  only  the  promise.  It  was  still  in  the 
hands  of  the  pioneers,  types  of  that  same  rest- 
less vanguard  which  has  opened  up  all  of  our 
country,  and  then  passed  on  without  waiting 
for  the  harvest.  They  had  skimmed  off  the 
top  of  the  rich  copper  deposit  in  Red  Valley, 
and  then  as  the  ore  grew  leaner  and  harder  to 
mine,  they  began  moving  away,  leaving  their 


Roger  Drake 

very  dump  heaps  richer  than  they  were.  Now 
it  remained  for  those  who  could  see  far  ahead, 
who  had  the  money  and  the  patience  to  wait 
(for  it  takes  both),  for  the  organizers,  to  take 
what  the  pioneers  had  left  and  turn  it  into 
wealth.  If  I  had  only  got  out  of  Stanley  what 
was  merely  mine  by  right,  I  could  have  gone 
fast.  As  it  was,  it  behooved  me  to  move  cau- 
tiously. The  more  so,  as  it  was  clear  that 
Stanley's  agent  would  attempt  to  run  me  out 
of  town  the  moment  I  seemed  to  have  got 
enough  of  a  start  to  make  it  worth  while.  But 
I  knew  the  valley,  and  I  got  to  know  every 
man  in  it,  and  I  was  sure  that  if  Stanley  didn't 
strike  too  soon,  I  should  be  able  to  hold  my 
own  against  him. 

There  were  a  number  of  people  living  in  my 
boarding-house,  but  only  two  who  interested 
me  particularly.  They  were  both  about  my 
age,  and  both  had  only  recently  come  to  town, 
to  "  grow  up  with  the  country,"  but  that  is  all 
you  can  say  and  include  both  of  them,  for  they 
were  as  different  as  black  from  white. 

Lawrence  was  New  England,  every  inch  of 
him  ;  a  graduate  of  one  of  the  smaller  New 
England  colleges,  and  fresh  from  a  New  Eng- 
land lawyer's  office.  That  was  all  easily  guessed 
at  first  glance,  though  I  hadn't  his  authority 
132 


Roger  Drake 

for  it  until  long  afterward.  He  was  slow  and 
cautious  in  speech,  and,  in  stating  a  fact,  always 
a  little  below  the  mark.  That  was  as  much  a 
habit  with  him  as  exaggeration  is  with  most 
other  people.  He  liked  a  shrewd  trade  as  well 
as  anybody,  but  I  never  found  a  dishonest  streak 
in  him.  He  wasn't  what  you'd  call  approach- 
able; I'd  known  him  two  years,  and  pretty 
well,  too,  before  he  would  look  as  though  he 
was  glad  to  see  me  when  we  met  in  the  street. 

The  other  man's  name  was  Reech.  He 
might  have  come  from  almost  any  large  city 
in  America.  He  talked  nearly  all  the  while, 
and  pretty  well,  mostly  about  himself  and  what 
he'd  done,  but  you  knew  but  little  more  about 
him  as  time  went  on  than  you  had  known  at 
first.  You  couldn't  guess  what  his  business 
had  been ;  he  talked  as  familiarly  about  Drew 
and  the  Commodore  and  the  exploits  of  the 
late  Jim  Fisk,  as  if  he  had  been  a  partner  with 
every  one  of  them.  He  said  frankly  that  he 
was  in  Red  City  for  the  purpose  of  getting  into 
"  something  good,"  even  if  he  had  to  start  it 
himself.  Meanwhile  he  lived  in  the  two  best 
rooms  in  the  boarding-house,  which  he  called 
his  apartments,  —  a  name  quite  unknown  in  our 
democratic  little  community,  —  and  he  dressed 
better  than  any  of  the  rest  of  us.  He  was  still 


Roger  Drake 

putting  in  his  time  getting  acquainted,  but  it 
wasn't  long  before  he  was  on  drinking  terms 
with  everybody  in  town. 

Naturally  two  men  like  that  hadn't  much 
use  for  each  other,  but  it  seemed  to  me  that  I 
might  make  use  of  each  of  them  ;  so,  while  I  let 
Reech  get  tolerably  familiar  with  me,  I  did  my 
best  to  thaw  out  Lawrence.  It  wasn't  long 
before  I  found  some  business  for  both  of  them. 

I  was  doing  six  good  days'  work  a  week  down 
at  the  smelter,  but  that  didn't  keep  me  from 
thinking  hour  by  hour,  nights  and  Sundays, 
what  was  the  best  way  to  make  my  start,  and 
at  last  I  got  it  pretty  well  figured  out. 

I  have  spoken  of  the  falls  of  Bent  River  just 
above  the  town.  Part  of  the  water  was  sluiced 
off  to  turn  the  wheel  belonging  to  a  grist-mill 
which  dated  back  to  the  village.  The  old  mill 
may  have  known  prosperous  days  when  Red 
Valley  was  an  agricultural  community,  but  of 
course  when  they  began  roasting  sulphurous 
ores  up  at  the  end  of  the  valley  nearest  the 
prevailing  wind,  every  spear  of  green  was 
blasted  at  once,  and  the  mill  became  practically 
worthless.  The  miller  had  got  the  mining 
fever,  had  drilled  unsuccessfully  on  his  prop- 
erty, and  then  had  put  his  savings  into  a  claim 
which  proved  none  too  prosperous. 
'34 


Roger   Drake 

It  was  just  what  might  have  been  ex- 
pected in  a  town  like  Red  City  that  no  one 
was  looking  far  enough  ahead  to  see  the  value 
of  that  water  power.  It  didn't  produce  copper, 
and  that  was  enough  to  keep  away  any  one  from 
taking  the  least  interest  in  it.  We  are  lighting 
the  town  now,  besides  running  one  of  the  trolley 
lines,  by  that  power,  so  it  would  have  proved  a 
good  investment  anyway  in  the  long  run,  but 
I  had  a  special  use  for  it.  My  scheme  wasn't 
entirely  developed,  but  one's  schemes  seldom 
are  when  the  moment  for  making  a  start  comes 
around.  I  think  the  surest  way  to  make  a 
failure  nowadays  is  to  wait  till  you're  sure 
you're  right  before  you  go  ahead. 

So  I  dropped  in  at  Lawrence's  office,  and  told 
him  that  if  he  could  get  that  mill  and  the  water 
power  cheap,  I'd  like  him  to  buy  it  for  me. 

He  was  probably  surprised  at  my  having 
money  enough  to  go  in  for  anything  like  that, 
but  he  didn't  show  it,  and  I  gave  him  a  check 
for  enough  to  bind  the  bargain  if  he  should 
make  it.  He  asked  me  what  I  thought  was  a 
fair  price  for  it,  and  I  said  I  believed  he  could 
get  it  for  five  thousand  dollars,  cash  down,  and 
I  told  him  what  per  cent  I'd  pay  him  as  a  com- 
mission. Then  he  did  what  struck  me  as  a 
very  shrewd  thing. 


Roger  Drake 

"  If  you  pay  me  that  percentage  on  what  I 
pay  for  the  property,  then  the  better  I  do  the 
work,  the  less  I  am  paid  for  it.  Why  not  base 
my  percentage  on  the  difference  between  what 
I  pay  and  twice  what  you  think  a  fair  price ; 
that  is,  if  I  can  get  it  for  four  thousand,  my 
percentage  will  be  on  six.  It  makes  our  inter- 
ests lie  the  same  way." 

I  was  glad  to  do  it,  and  I  always  thought 
more  of  Lawrence  after  that.  He  did  succeed 
in  getting  the  property  for  four  thousand.  It 
wasn't  three  days  before  he  had  the  deed 
for  it.  I  asked  him  to  hold  it  for  me  in  his 
name,  as  I  didn't  care  to  be  known  as  the 
owner  of  it. 

Then  it  was  time  to  turn  to  Reech.  I  didn't 
tell  him  my  scheme ;  I  let  him  worry  it  out 
of  me. 

This  is  as  briefly  as  possible  what  the  scheme 
was :  to  organize  a  new  ore  purchasing  and  re- 
fining company,  capitalized  at,  say,  one  hundred 
thousand  dollars.  To  get  possession  of  the 
water  power,  and  put  up  a  thoroughly  modern 
plant.  The  old  company  was  using  the  old 
and  costly  system  of  refining  copper  in  rever- 
beratories,  under  which  a  power  was  of  little 
advantage,  but  under  new  systems,  using  blast 
furnaces,  it  would  be  of  the  greatest  use.  We 
136 


, 


HE  LEARNED  ENOUGH   TO  TALK   ABOUT  IT  CONVINCINGLY." 


Roger   Drake 

could  produce  blister  copper  enough  cheaper 
than  they  could,  to  run  them  out  of  business. 

Reech  caught  up  the  scheme  with  the  great- 
est enthusiasm.  He  was  to  do  the  work  of 
getting  it  started,  and  was  to  take  a  certain 
amount  of  the  stock  in  payment.  I  was  to  be 
made  manager,  and  my  salary  was  to  be  paid 
for  a  certain  term  of  years  in  stock.  I  sug- 
gested that  if  the  owners  of  the  water  power 
could  be  got  to  take  their  pay  in  stock  also,  it 
would  be  an  advantage,  and  he  thought  so  too. 

He  went  into  it  with  all  his  might.  He 
learned  enough  about  smelting  from  me  to  talk 
about  it  convincingly,  and  in  no  time  at  all  he 
had  all  the  advantages  figured  out  in  percentages 
at  his  tongue's  end.  By  that  time  he  fully  be- 
lieved that  the  scheme  was  all  his  own,  which 
was  just  what  I  wanted. 

It  took  some  little  time  to  get  the  thing 
through,  and  some  other  things  happened  in 
the  meanwhile  which  will  be  told  about  later, 
but  it  did  go  through.  We  called  it  the  North- 
western Ore  Company ;  it  paid  me,  through 
Lawrence,  a  good  big  price  for  the  water  power  ; 
the  smelter  was  built,  it  was  economical,  and 
it  paid;  it  got  all  the  business  of  the  valley, 
Stanley's  included,  and  nobody  for  a  long  time 
knew  that  I,  who  really  owned  more  than  half 


Roger   Drake 

the  stock,  was  any  more  than  a  salaried  officer 
of  the  company.  Lawrence  voted  my  proxies 
at  annual  meetings,  and  my  dividends  were 
paid  to  him. 

That  first  year  in  Red  City  must  be  counted 
a  successful  one  for  me,  for  besides  making  a 
good  deal  of  money  I  laid  the  foundation  for 
my  fortune  ;  but  prosperous  as  I  was,  I  couldn't 
be  called  happy.  Loneliness  had  something 
to  do  with  it,  I  suppose.  The  town  was  grow- 
ing, as  only  such  a  town  can,  and  many  of  the 
newcomers  were  my  sort  of  folk,  but  I  was  too 
busy  to  make  new  friends  then,  and  among  the 
older  residents  were  few,  if  any,  whom  I  found 
very  companionable.  All  I  had  in  the  way 
of  friendly  intercourse  was  an  occasional  letter 
from  Fletcher. 

That  was  part  of  the  trouble  with  me,  but  it 
was  the  least  part.  The  truth  is  that  hard  as 
I  worked,  hard  as  I  tried  to  keep  my  mind 
on  the  present  or  the  future,  I  couldn't  help 
remembering.  You  will  guess  what  I  remem- 
bered. 

Sometimes  when  I  thought  of  them,  of 
Adele  and  George  Stanley,  it  was  with  the 
deep,  slow  burning,  white-hot  anger  that  eats 
the  heart  out  of  a  man.  They  had  betrayed 
me,  both  alike,  and  no  pain  that  I  could  make 
138 


Roger   Drake 

them  suffer  in  recompense  for  it  would  be 
more  than  bare  justice.  I  knew  that  nothing 
could  hurt  them  so  deep  as  poverty,  and,  with 
that  mood  of  anger  upon  me,  I  used  to  plan 
how,  when  once  I  could  get  my  grip  on  him, 
I  would  strip  them  of  all  their  luxuries,  yes, 
and  their  necessities  too,  and  I  would  think 
what  a  hell  their  life  would  be  when  I  had 
finished. 

But  that  was  not  my  mood  always  when  I 
thought  of  them.  Sometimes  I  could  see  it 
all,  as  I  believe  now,  more  justly.  I  could  see, 
taking  us  as  we  were,  each  with  his  own  par- 
ticular weakness,  how  what  had  been  was 
merely  what  must  have  been ;  how,  begin- 
ning as  it  had  begun,  the  wretched  business 
could  have  had  but  one  ending.  I  remem- 
bered how  her  beauty  had  overpowered  me 
that  time  I  saw  her  first,  framed  in  a  doorway. 
And  when  I  thought  how  Stanley  must  have 
seen  her  first,  standing  before  her  throne,  clad 
in  her  trailing  gown  of  gray,  her  wand  in  her 
hand,  how  she  must  have  looked  to  him  like  a 
very  fairy  until  the  excitement  in  her  eyes  told 
him  she  was  a  woman  :  when  I  thought  of  that, 
it  seemed  to  me  not  so  wonderful  that  he  had 
played  me  false,  as  that  he  had  tried  so  long  to 
be  honest  with  me. 

139 


Roger  Drake 

When  I  thought  in  that  strain,  it  was  re- 
gret that  filled  me,  rather  than  anger.  All 
my  regret  was  for  the  loss  of  my  friend,  none 
for  her  whom  I  had  once  hoped  to  make  my 
wife.  His  part  had  been  as  bad  as  hers,  or 
worse ;  but  if  I  had  loved  him  as  a  friend,  I 
could  still  admire  him  as  an  enemy,  admire  the 
boldness  with  which  he  accepted  the  conse- 
quences of  his  treachery.  I  thought  better  of 
him  for  having  attacked  me,  goaded  me,  as  he 
had  that  day  in  the  library,  than  I  could  have 
thought  if  he  had  tried  to  lessen  his  offence,  as 
he  might  have  done.  But  with  Adele,  some- 
how, it  was  different.  During  that  moment  in 
the  library  when  she  stood  between  Stanley 
and  me,  when  I  looked  at  her,  the  love  I  bore 
her  burnt  away  to  nothing ;  it  left  not  even  a 
cinder  of  regret  behind  it. 

Sometimes,  even  in  those  days,  I  used  to  tell 
myself  that  the  ending  had  been  better  for  me 
than  if  it  had  been  otherwise,  but  I  won't  pre- 
tend that  I  believed  that ;  not  until  afterward. 

I  have  always  had  a  strong  body  and  a  lot 
of  endurance,  but  what  with  work  and  worry, 
that  year,  I  pulled  myself  down  pretty  well, 
and  I  might  have  suffered  for  it  afterward  if  it 
had  not  been  for  a  lucky  accident.  It  was  a 
blessing  no  doubt,  but  it  took  me  some  time 
140 


Roger  Drake 

to  penetrate  its  disguise.  It  happened  when  I 
was  walking  home  late  one  September  night 
from  the  smelter.  There  was  a  lot  of  building 
and  grading  going  on  in  town,  and  many  of  the 
sidewalks  were  high  above  the  ground,  some  of 
them  in  the  shakiest  possible  condition.  The 
streets  were  badly  lighted,  and  as  I  was  strid- 
ing along  pretty  fast,  and  paying  little  attention 
to  where  I  was  going,  it  was  not  unnatural  that 
I  came  to  grief.  I  stepped  on  the  edge  of  a 
loose  board  and  pitched  down  into  an  excava- 
tion for  a  new  building.  About  ten  feet  below 
the  sidewalk  I  struck  among  some  barrels  full 
of  lime  and  then  landed  on  the  point  of  my 
shoulder. 

I  don't  know  just  how  long  I  was  uncon- 
scious, but  when  I  came  to  I  tried  to  get  up. 
It  was  no  wonder  that  I  couldn't,  for,  as  it 
proved,  my  right  leg  was  fractured  just  below 
the  knee,  and  my  collar-bone  was  broken 
besides.  I  lay  there  nearly  an  hour  before 
any  one  came  near  enough  to  hear  me  call  for 
help,  but  after  that  it  wasn't  long  before  I  was 
put  to  bed,  more  a  bundle  of  splints  and  band- 
ages than  anything  like  a  man.  The  doctor 
was  a  young  fellow,  but  skilful,  for  Red  City 
had  given  him  plenty  of  practice  in  the  way  of 
accidents. 

141 


Roger   Drake 

"There,"  he  said,  when  they  got  through 
with  me,  "  now  all  you  have  to  do  is  to  lie 
perfectly  still  for  six  weeks  or  so  till  you  grow 
together  again.  Don't  worry  yourself  into  a 
fever ;  have  just  as  good  a  time  as  you  can." 

That  was  all  right  to  say,  but  how  was  I  to 
do  it  ?  The  prospect  would  have  been  gloomy 
enough  for  any  active  man,  but  my  case  was 
worse.  I  had  managed,  during  most  of  the 
hours  of  every  day,  to  keep  my  mind  off  the 
past  by  keeping  it  full  of  the  present,  but  now 
I  had  nothing  to  do  but  lie  still  and  stare  at 
it.  I  tried  to  make  the  best  of  it.  I  could 
read  part  of  the  time,  anyway,  and  I  figured 
out  some  improvements  in  the  blast-furnace 
practice  at  our  smelter,  which  I  meant  to  try 
when  I  got  around  again.  But  that  was  a  poor 
substitute  for  a  good  day's  work.  At  the  end 
of  two  weeks  I  was  pretty  blue. 

And  then  the  unexpected  help  came,  as  I've 
discovered  that  it  almost  always  does  come 
when  you've  about  made  up  your  mind  that 
there  isn't  any  help  or  any  way  out.  It  came 
one  morning  in  the  person  of  Christian  Jansen. 

He  had   reached  town  the  evening  before, 

and  had  then  learned  for  the  first  time  of  my 

accident,  and  it  was  like  him  that  he  found  out 

all  the  details  of  it,  and  of  the  condition  I  was 

142 


Roger  Drake 

in  then,  from  the  doctor,  and  that  when  he 
came  striding  into  my  room  and  pulled  a  chair 
close  up  to  the  bed,  he  didn't  begin  by  making 
me  tell  the  story  all  over  again.  He  just  put  his 
big  gentle  hand  on  my  head,  nodded  ponder- 
ously, and  sitting  down,  began  to  filling  his  pipe. 

It  made  me  feel  better,  just  to  see  him  there, 
than  I'd  felt  since  I'd  got  hurt.  "  Well,"  said 
I,  "  this  is  a  foolish  position  for  a  strong  man 
to  be  in,  isn't  it  ?  " 

"When  you  are  strong  again,"  he  said, 
smiling,  "  I  shall  take  you  sorely  to  task. 
You  did  not  call  upon  your  friend  when  he 
might  have  been  of  service  to  you." 

He  made  me  feel  so  clearly  that  he  was  my 
friend,  and  that  he  wanted  to  help  me,  that 
before  I  knew  it  I  was  telling  him  everything, 
all  that  troubled  me,  —  though  I  had  told  him 
something  of  that  already,  —  all  that  I  was  con- 
tending against,  all  that  I  hoped  to  accomplish. 

"  The  worst  of  this  accident  is,"  I  said  at 
last,  "that  I  can't  keep  my  mind  busy.  If  I 
could  hold  it  where  I  want  it,  I  shouldn't  mind 
so  much  having  to  lie  still." 

"  I    came  to  Red  City  partly  to  ask   your 
opinion  in    a    matter  of  business,"   he  began. 
"  When   I   heard  of  your  accident,  I   thought 
not  to  trouble  you  with  it." 
H3 


Roger   Drake 

I  told  him  that  anything  which  would  give 
me  something  to  work  at,  or  to  think  about, 
was  just  what  I  had  been  hoping  for. 

"  The  question  I  have  to  ask  is  this.  In 
your  opinion,  as  an  engineer  of  mines,  is  there 
much  copper  lying  under  my  lands  ?  Not  in 
the  valley,  but  below  in  the  gorge,  opposite 
the  Croesus."  He  did  not  give  me  time  to 
answer  at  once,  but  went  on  to  say  that  Stanley 
had  written  him  several  letters  about  it,  and 
that  Jackson,  the  new  manager  at  the  Croesus, 
had  called  on  him  to  talk  about  it.  Of  course 
I  had  supposed  they  would  do  that. 

For  just  a  minute  I  hesitated.  The  business 
instinct  gets  so  strong  in  a  man  who  has  been 
forced  to  live  as  I  have,  that  it  speaks  to  him 
whether  it  is  bidden  or  not.  But  I  should 
have  been  a  rascal  if  I  had  listened  to  it  then. 

I  told  him  all  I  knew.  I  went  over  my 
theories  with  him  just  as  I  had  gone  over  them 
by  myself  scores  of  times  since  we  had  discov- 
ered the  Croesus,  looking  for  a  flaw  in  them. 
The  sum  of  them  was  just  this :  that  I  believed 
the  river  valley,  at  that  point,  to  have  been 
formed  by  what  geologists  call  a  simple  bend ; 
that  is,  by  an  upheaval  which  had  occurred 
locally  beneath  a  solidified  area  of  rock,  caus- 
ing it  to  break  upward,  and  leaving  a  V-shaped 
144 


Roger  Drake 

crack  or  gorge  across  it.  "If  this  is  true,"  said 
I,  "it  is  altogether  probable  that  the  other  half 
or  more  of  the  Croesus  lode  is  in  your  land.  I 
believe  that  the  copper  in  your  property  is  im- 
mensely valuable." 

"  Mr.  Jackson  made  it  appear  differently . 
He  represented  that  it  would  be  by  chance 
only  if  anything  should  be  found.  But  for 
that  chance,"  he  said,  "  Mr.  Stanley  would  be 
willing  to  pay  something." 

I  exclaimed  against  that,  but  he  checked  me, 
and  went  on  :  "  I  said  nothing  to  Mr.  Jackson. 
He  was  the  agent  of  his  master,  and  he  may  be 
an  honest  man.  I  did  not  wish  to  cause  him 
pain.  But  I  wrote  to  his  master  that  I  would 
have  no  dealings  with  one  whom  I  knew  for  a 
knave,  and  the  betrayer  of  his  friend." 

His  face  flushed,  and  he  struck  with  his 
clenched  hands  upon  the  arms  of  his  chair  so 
that  they  creaked.  "  A  knave  he  is,"  he 
thundered,  "  a  knave  and  a  traitor.  And  were 
he  mine  to  deal  with,  he  should  be  branded  so 
across  his  forehead."  He  rose  from  his  chair, 
and  paced  the  room  with  his  giant  strides, 
talking  to  himself  so  low  that  I  could  not 
understand  him.  But  suddenly  he  checked 
himself,  and  looking  at  me,  said  with  a  note  of 
awe  in  his  voice :  " '  He  that  sitteth  in  the 
L  145 


Roger   Drake 

heavens  shall  laugh.  The  Lord  shall  have 
them  in  derision.' ' 

He  sat  down  again  beside  me  and  began 
speaking  very  quietly.  "  I  am  a  sorry  com- 
forter to  tear  at  the  wound  of  my  friend,  and  I 
have  wandered  from  what  I  came  to  tell  you. 
It  shall  be  told  now,  and  soberly.  My  son  and 
I  have  talked  long  about  it,  and  we  are  decided. 
For  ourselves  we  have  enough.  The  ways  have 
been  made  green  under  our  feet;  the  clouds 
have  rained  bounty  upon  us,  and  we  want  no 
more.  But  I  hope  that  all  you  think  about 
the  wealth  of  my  lands  in  ore  may  come  true, 
for  whatever  is  there  belongs  to  you  —  is  yours 
for  the  seeking." 

I  was  taken  completely  by  surprise,  and  stam- 
mered out  that  I  didn't  understand.  "  Is  the 
gift  of  a  friend  hard  to  understand  ?  "  he  asked. 
He  relighted  his  pipe  before  he  continued. 

"  It  is  not  even  a  dear  gift.  Our  way  of  life 
is  in  green  pastures  and  beside  still  waters. 
Each  year  the  earth's  green  cloak  changes  to 
gold  and  supplies  our  needs  and  our  desires. 
Why  should  we  want  more  ?  And  when  I  am 
told  that  in  the  waste  lands  which  surround  my 
valley  there  may  lie  hidden  something  which  I 
do  not  want,  but  which  may  be  of  great  worth 
to  my  friend,  why  should  I  not  say  to  him,  as 
146 


Roger  Drake 

I  say  to  you,  {  What  you  may  find  is  yours ; 
and  may  you  find  all  you  can  hope  to  find  and 
more'?" 

At  first  I  couldn't  believe  that  I  had  heard 
him  aright;  when  I  understood  and  tried  to 
speak,  my  voice  shook,  and  choked,  and  finally 
stuck  fast,  and  all  that  I  could  do  was  to  hold  out 
my  hand  to  him.  He  nearly  broke  it,  too,  in 
his  grip.  As  he  let  go,  the  door  opened  and 
the  doctor  walked  in.  "  How  are  you  ?  "  he 
asked.  "  All  right  ?  I  suppose  you  know 
where  you're  going  ?  " 

I  didn't ;  but  it  was  evident  that  wherever  it 
was,  I  was  to  go  soon.  They  brought  in  a 
litter  with  a  mattress  on  it,  and  they  worked  me 
over  upon  it,  and  piled  blankets  on  me,  till  I 
asked  if  they  meant  to  take  me  clear  to  the 
north  pole.  Then  they  told  me  between  them 
that  I  was  going  up  the  river  to  Father  Jan- 
sen's  valley,  to  stay  there  till  I  could  ride  back 
on  a  horse.  With  the  help  of  some  laborers 
they  carried  me  to  the  river,  put  me  on  a  raft 
that  had  an  awning  improvised  over  it,  and  then 
our  expedition  started  up  the  gorge. 

It  took  all  the  rest  of  the  day  and  into  the 
evening,  poling,  rowing,  and  now  and  then  tak- 
ing a  tow  from  Father  Jansen  and  another  horse- 
man on  the  bank.  I  was  happy  again,  happier 
H7 


Roger   Drake 

than  I  had  been  for  months.  I  suppose  that 
being  out  in  the  keen,  clear  air  had  something 
to  do  with  it,  and  the  sight  of  old  Father  Jansen, 
who  had  shown  me  that  I  had  a  friend  again ; 
but  I  think  now  that  all  that  was  a  sense  of 
the  peace  that  was  to  come  to  me.  I  forgot  all 
about  the  copper. 

It  was  night  before  we  tied  up  at  the  wharf, 
and  the  air  was  cold,  but  the  sparks  flying  from 
the  wide  chimney,  and  the  lights  in  the  win- 
dows of  the  old  house,  bade  us  welcome.  They 
took  me  up  and  bore  me  along  the  path,  Father 
Jansen  walking  on  ahead.  As  we  neared  the 
house,  the  door  swung  open,  and  I  saw,  though 
not  very  clearly,  a  woman's  figure  in  the  door- 
way. For  a  moment  I  was  puzzled,  and  then 
I  knew;  Barget  had  come  home  again.  Her 
father  kissed  her,  and  they  talked  for  a  moment 
as  we  were  coming  up,  but  when  my  litter  was 
set  down  in  the  wide  hall,  she  had  disappeared. 
I  lay  there  awhile  before  the  fire.  Father  Jan- 
sen and  Gus  were  tiptoeing  in  and  out,  and 
sometimes,  when  they  were  in  an  adjoining 
room,  I  heard  them  talking  to  her  in  loud 
whispers,  but  I  did  not  see  her  face  or  hear  her 
voice  that  evening ;  for  when  they  took  me  into 
the  big  room  they  had  been  preparing  for  me, 
she  was  gone  from  there. 
148 


Roger   Drake 

The  warmth  of  the  fire  had  made  me  sleepy, 
however,  and  I  wasted  no  rime  speculating  about 
anybody,  for  I  was  fast  asleep  almost  before 
they  had  me  in  bed.  It  was  broad  daylight 
before  I  awoke ;  turning  my  head,  I  could  see 
the  sun  streaming  down  on  the  golden  valley, 
and  on  the  white-faced  cliffs  across  the  river, 
with  the  blue  mountain  peaks  away  behind 
them. 

I  didn't  have  any  way  of  knowing  what  time 
it  was,  and  I  didn't  much  care,  for  I  felt  that  I 
could  lie  that  way  all  day  long,  without  sight 
or  sound  of  anybody. 

But  I  soon  found  that  the  place  had  been 
awake  long  before  I  was.  Occasionally  some 
farm  laborers  would  go  by  the  house  near 
enough  for  me  to  hear  their  voices,  and  about 
the  house  itself  there  were  suppressed  sounds 
of  people  stirring. 

At  last  my  door  was  opened  cautiously,  and 
very  softly,  for  him,  Father  Jansen  came  into 
the  room.  When  he  saw  I  was  awake,  he  came 
over  to  the  bed  and  asked  me  how  I'd  slept. 
Just  as  I  told  him,  we  heard  a  step  in  the  hall, 
and  turning  to  the  door,  he  called,  "  Barget !  " 

She  came  into  the  room,  and  it  seemed  to 
me  as  though  the  morning  light  I  had  seen 
lying  out  upon  the  fields  came  in  with  her. 
14.9 


Roger   Drake 

The  wind  had  made  wild  work  of  her  yellow 
hair,  and  in  her  arms  she  carried  a  great  bundle 
of  goldenrod.  She  laid  it  down  tenderly,  as 
she  would  have  treated  a  child,  and  then  came 
over  to  greet  me. 

Her  father  put  his  arm  across  her  shoulders. 
"This  is  my  daughter  Barget,"  he  said.  "My 
daughter,  and  your  nurse,  for  I  am  holding  her 
responsible  for  you  until  you  are  well." 


150 


ff  'THIS   IS   MY   DAUGHTER   AND   YOUR   NURSE.' 


CHAPTER   VII 

I  THINK  my  life  has  been  a  stormy  one. 
I  have  been  realizing  that  more  lately,  as  I 
have  sat  at  this  task  of  writing  an  account  of 
part  of  it,  more,  now  that  the  storms  are  pretty 
well  over,  than  I  did  when  I  was  in  the  thick 
of  them.  But  though  I  took  fighting  as  a 
matter  of  course  through  a  good  many  years, 
yet,  since  the  day  when  I  rode  down  the  gorge 
after  the  accident  and  its  consequences,  I  have 
always  thought  of  those  weeks  at  Father  Jan- 
sen's  as  of  a  little  island  of  peace  set  quite  apart 
from  all  the  rest  of  my  life.  Certainly  what  I 
found  there  was  new  to  me  then,  and  though 
what  I  took  with  me  when  I  went  away  has 
dwelt  with  me  ever  since,  has  been  the  greater 
part  of  all  the  happiness  I  have  known  since, 
still  the  serenity,  the  feeling  of  entire  detach- 
ment from  all  the  pain  and  woe  and  worry  of 
the  world,  has  never  come  back  to  me  as  it  was 
with  me  in  those  weeks. 

For  the  first  few  days  I  did  nothing  but  lie 
still  and  let  the  air  blow  over  me  through  the 


Roger  Drake 

wide  windows.  I  stopped  trying  to  keep  my 
mind  full  of  the  present  and  the  future ;  I 
stopped  struggling  with  my  memories,  for  I 
found  I  could  think  of  those  past  days,  of  my 
friendship  for  Stanley  and  of  my  infatuation 
with  Adele,  without  anger  or  regret,  without 
any  more  emotion  than  if  it  had  all  belonged  to 
a  man  I  had  read  about  in  a  story.  It  was  as 
though  the  current  had  been  shut  off  from  a 
hot,  live  wire  which  had  bound  my  head. 

Father  Jansen  and  Gus  would  come  in  once 
in  a  while,  and  would  lift  me  around  whenever 
it  was  necessary,  for  I  was  still  helpless ;  but 
most  of  the  time  Barget  took  care  of  me. 
During  the  first  ten  days  I  didn't  see  very 
much  even  of  her.  I  suppose  if  I  had  been 
really  sick  instead  of  merely  disabled,  it  might 
have  been  different ;  anyway,  there  was  nothing 
in  the  least  sentimental  about  her  ministrations, 
no  stroking  of  my  brow  or  anything  of  that 
sort.  She  saw  that  I  was  content  to  be  let  alone, 
and  she  appeared  only  when  there  was  some- 
thing she  could  do.  But  I  knew  all  the  time 
that  she  was  somewhere  about,  within  call,  and 
that  it  really  pleased  her  to  be  of  service  to  me. 
Often  I  would  hear  her  singing  softly  to  her- 
self, or  playing  on  her  piano  quaint  little  melo- 
dies like  none  I  had  ever  heard,  but  even  when 
152 


Roger   Drake 

she  was  silent  it  made  me  feel  happier  and  more 
contented  just  to  know  that  she  was  not  far  off. 

All  through  those  days  Father  Jansen's  offer 
of  the  copper  which  might  be  lying  in  the  cliffs 
opposite  the  Croesus  was  hardly  in  my  thoughts 
at  all.  How  I  could  have  lain  still,  and  have 
been  contented  to  lie  still,  with  a  possibility 
like  that  unexplored  before  me,  is  something 
that  to  this  day  I  can't  understand,  but  it  is 
true  that  I  did.  It  wasn't  exactly  forgotten ;  it 
seemed  to  be  submerged  away  down  in  the 
unconscious  part  of  my  mind  somewhere,  and 
now  and  then  it  would  float  up  to  the  surface. 
But  I  was  too  lazy  to  consider  it,  and  would 
send  it  down  out  of  sight  again,  saying  to  my- 
self that  it  wasn't  necessary  to  think  about  that 
yet. 

That  mood  lasted  perhaps  a  week,  and  then, 
one  morning,  I  found  myself  wide  awake  and 
anxious  to  do  something.  So  I  called  up 
Father  Jansen's  offer  and  began  to  think  it 
over.  He  had  told  me,  you  remember,  that 
whatever  mineral  wealth  lay  under  his  land 
down  in  the  gorge  was  mine  for  the  seeking. 
I  was  almost  sure  that  it  was  very  great,  but, 
of  course,  I  had  no  idea  how  enormously  great 
it  was,  and  I  won't  pretend  that  I  wasn't 
tempted  to  take  him  at  his  word. 


Roger  Drake 

It  is  in  such  times  that  I  envy  a  man  like 
Fletcher.  To  him  the  question  how  far  it  was 
right  to  accept  Father  Jansen's  generosity  would 
have  been  as  easily  solved  as  a  simple  quadratic 
equation,  and  he  would  no  more  have  hesitated 
over  his  solution  of  one  than  the  other.  But 
with  me,  and  I  think  with  most  ordinary  busi- 
ness men,  it  is  different.  I  argued  with  myself 
all  day  before  I  could  be  sure  that  the  propo- 
sition I  meant  to  make  to  Father  Jansen  was 
a  square  one.  That  seems  a  pretty  damaging 
confession  to  make  now  that  everybody  knows 
how  incalculably  valuable  the  gift  was  he  had 
made  me.  Of  course  I  wasn't  sure,  that  day, 
that  there  would  be  enough  to  divide  comfort- 
ably, or  even  that  there  would  be  anything  at 
all. 

After  I  had  decided  what  would  be  a  fair 
division,  I  had  still  to  make  him  agree  to  it, 
and  that  was  harder  than  it  had  been  to  make 
up  my  own  mind.  He  seemed  to  feel  that  any 
agreement  such  as  I  suggested  put  the  smirch 
of  commerce  upon  his  gift,  and  at  first  he  al- 
most refused  to  listen  to  me. 

"You  are  kinder  than  any  other  friend  I  ever 

have  had,"  said  I.     "  When  I  have  got  you  to 

sign  this  agreement  and  when  I  shall  have  taken 

every  opportunity  that  ever  comes  to  me  to  be 

154 


HE   SMOKED   TWO   OR   THREE   PIPES  OVER   IT. 


Roger   Drake 

of  service  to  you  and  yours,  I  shall  still  be 
under  a  greater  obligation  to  you  than  I  can 
estimate.  I'm  not  trying  to  get  you  to  take 
a  commercial  equivalent  for  your  gift  to  me. 
The  only  pay  I  shall  ever  offer  you  for  that  is 
thanks.  But  I'm  asking  you  as  a  favor  to  me 
that  you  put  your  gift  in  such  form  that  I  can 
accept  it." 

We  went  over  the  same  ground  several  times, 
and  at  last,  fairly  in  my  last  ditch,  I  said  that 
I  couldn't  go  ahead  at  all,  couldn't  even  begin 
to  drill,  unless  he'd  agree  to  some  such  arrange- 
ment as  I  had  outlined,  which  should  turn  any 
strike  I  might  make  to  his  profit  as  well  as 
mine. 

He  smoked  two  or  three  pipes  over  it  with- 
out a  word,  and  at  last,  very  reluctantly,  he 
yielded. 

Then  offhand  I  made  a  suggestion  which, 
on  reflection,  I  almost  wished  unsaid,  though 
the  event  proved  it  a  good  one  for  all  of  us 
concerned  :  jt  was  that  under  my  direction  the 
enterprise  should  be  intrusted  to  Gus.  He  had 
really  picked  up  a  good  deal  of  practical  knowl- 
edge of  such  matters  over  at  the  Croesus  while 
I  was  in  charge  there,  and  he  wasn't  entirely 
without  more  systematic  instruction  either,  for 
I  had  loaned  him  some  good  text-books,  and 
'55 


Roger   Drake 

as  I  found  out  afterward  he  had  made  good 
use  of  them.  Then  he  had  the  knack  for  such 
things  born  in  him,  and  that  made  up  for  what 
he  lacked  in  experience. 

Besides  pleasing  him,  the  prospect  pleased 
his  father  and  Barget  exceedingly,  but  I  hadn't 
acted  wholly  unselfishly ;  in  fact,  that  was  right 
along  the  line  of  policy  which  I  had  been  fol- 
lowing consistently,  of  masking  my  batteries. 
I  wasn't  ready  yet  to  have  Stanley  know  just 
how  strong  I  was.  I  didn't  fear  any  longer 
that  he  could  make  good  his  boast  that  he 
would  run  me  out  of  town  ;  I  was  pretty  sure 
that  if  it  came  to  a  fight,  I  could  hold  my  own 
against  him.  But  what  I  hoped  was  that  I 
might  be  able  to  stay  tolerably  inconspicuous 
in  the  community  until  I  was  strong  enough  to 
be  let  alone.  With  Gus  in  charge  of  the  new 
mine,  my  connection  wouldn't  be  remarked,  no 
matter  how  sensational  a  strike  we  might  make. 

The  new  project  threw  all  the  family  into 
a  pleasant  bustle  of  excitement.  At  first  we 
planned  not  to  start  until  I  was  able  to  get 
about  and  look  over  the  land  a  little,  but  we 
soon  found  that  our  patience  wasn't  equal  to 
that  test.  Accordingly  it  was  arranged  that 
Gus  should  go  down  to  Red  City  to  get  such 
an  outfit  as  was  necessary  for  making  a  start, 
156 


Roger   Drake 

and  that  as  soon  as  possible  afterward  the  pre- 
liminary drilling  should  begin.  All  this  in- 
volved an  almost  endless  amount  of  talking, 
of  going  over  uncountable  details,  and  then 
going  over  them  again,  and  the  more  we  talked, 
the  more  absorbingly  interesting  the  matter 
grew,  until  we  couldn't  think  or  even  dream  of 
anything  else.  Barget  was  nearly  always  present 
at  these  consultations,  though  what  she  could 
find  to  interest  her  amid  the  technical  mazes  of 
our  talk  I  couldn't  imagine. 

She  didn't  seem  to  care  to  have  it  explained 
to  her,  and,  indeed,  whenever  I  tried  to  do  so, 
she  checked  me,  saying  she  liked  it  better  when 
she  could  make  her  own  guesses  at  what  it  meant. 
She  always  sat  close  beside  her  father,  holding 
one  of  his  big  hands,  her  eyes  on  her  brother, 
or  at  least  never,  when  I  was  looking  at  her, 
on  me. 

With  the  passing  of  the  period  of  talk  and 
the  beginning  of  the  active  work,  my  usefulness 
was,  for  the  time  being,  over.  I  found  it  pretty 
hard  to  reconcile  myself  to  this  order  of  things, 
for  my  mind  would  not  return  to  that  beatific 
state  of  vacancy  which  it  had  enjoyed  at  first. 
The  old  troubles  did  not  come  back  to  harass 
me,  my  memories  did  not  begin  hurting  me 
again,  and,  indeed,  I  couldn't  be  sure  what  it 


Roger   Drake 

was  that  made  me  restless,  but  it  was  some- 
thing, sure  enough,  or  the  lack  of  something. 

I  was  reading  one  morning, —  I  remember  it 
was  a  new  monograph  on  pyritic  smelting, — 
and  though  I  ought  to  have  been  keenly  inter- 
ested in  it,  and  tried  to  persuade  myself  that  I 
was,  in  reality  it  was  extremely  tiresome.  After 
a  while  Barget  came  in. 

"  Would  you  like  me  to  read  to  you  ?  "  she 
asked.  "The  book  must  be  heavy  when  you 
have  only  one  hand  to  hold  it  in." 

I  thought  perhaps  that  was  why  I  had  found 
it  tiresome,  and  I  yielded  it  to  her  readily,  but 
I  was  in  no  hurry  for  her  to  begin  reading.  I 
told  her  she  would  find  it  pretty  dull  work,  but 
she  smiled  and  said  she  shouldn't  mind,  and 
then  without  any  delay  she  began  to  read  from 
where  I  had  left  off. 

I  had  always  experienced  a  little  sensation 
of  pleasure  whenever  I  heard  her  speak,  but  I 
had  never  stopped  to  think  why  this  was  so. 
Now  I  realized  that  hers  was  the  most  beauti- 
ful, the  most  perfectly  modulated  voice  that  I 
had  ever  heard.  It  reminded  me  of  her  father's, 
it  was  a  little  like  Fletcher's,  but  still  it  was  like 
no  other  voice  in  the  world. 

I  was  no  longer  restless.  I  settled  back  in 
the  pillows  and  listened  and  watched  her  as  she 
158 


Roger   Drake 

frowned  and  stumbled  a  little  over  the  many- 
jointed  words.  I  listened,  but  I  wasn't  learn- 
ing much  about  pyritic  smelting. 

After  a  while  she  stopped,  and  looking  up 
found  my  eyes  upon  her.  "I  felt — I  was 
afraid  you  weren't  listening,"  she  said. 

I  had  fallen  into  a  sort  of  day-dream,  of 
Barget  and  her  goldenrod,  the  goldenrod  which 
she  loved,  and  which  seemed,  somehow,  to 
belong  to  her.  I  knew  my  face  had  pleaded 
guilty,  so  I  did  not  try  to  deny  her  accusation. 
"  I  don't  believe  I'm  in  the  mood  for  that  sort 
of  thing  to-day,"  I  said. 

She  would  have  gone  away  then,  but  I  asked 
her  to  stay.  "  Not  if  you  have  anything  else 
to  do,"  I  added.  "  Only  if  you  meant  to  sew 
or  read,  or  anything  of  that  sort,  couldn't  you 
do  it  in  here  ?  Then  if  we  feel  like  talking  we 
can  talk,  but  otherwise  we  needn't.  It's  pleas- 
ant to  have  someone  near  by." 

I  don't  know  whether  I  can  claim  that  that 
"  some  one  "  was  honest  or  not.  Of  course  it 
was  Barget  I  liked  to  have  near  by,  and  if  any 
one  else  had  come  in  her  stead  I  should  have 
had  to  retract  the  word,  to  myself  anyway. 
But  there  was  no  one  else,  and  she  agreed  with 
me  that  it  was  pleasant  to  be  with  people  if  you 
didn't  have  to  try  to  entertain  each  other.  So 


Roger   Drake 

for  the  present  we  were  safe  with  our  generali- 
ties, and  they  worked  very  well  indeed. 

She  used  sometimes  to  bring  in  her  book  or 
her  mending  or  whatever  her  occupation  for 
the  hour  might  be,  and  as  the  days  went  by, 
she  came  oftener  and  stayed  longer,  until  at 
last  we  were  together  nearly  all  the  time.  She 
always  sat  by  one  of  the  western  windows,  and 
often  her  work  or  her  book  would  drop  in  her 
lap,  and  her  face  turn  to  the  autumn  glory  of 
the  hills ;  and  I  would  lie  almost  breathless, 
lest  a  sound  should  call  her  back,  watching  her 
radiant  face.  Her  happiness  in  the  goldenrod, 
the  sunsets,  the  trees,  the  river,  was  never  ex- 
pressed in  words  nor  smiles,  but  it  seemed 
sometimes  that  her  face  was  really  luminous, 
as  though  the  lamp  of  her  soul  were  burning 
brighter.  I  remembered  what  Fletcher  had 
once  said  about  Adele  Broughton's  beauty ; 
that  it  was  literal,  and  that  it  could  be  tran- 
scribed line  for  line  with  a  brush.  I  knew  now 
what  he  meant. 

We  talked  a  good  deal,  too,  and  more  as 
the  time  went  on,  and,  once  we  were  started,  it 
was  surprising  how  easy  we  found  it  to  run 
on,  inconsequently,  without  restraint,  as  old 
friends  do. 

Meanwhile  Gus  had  come  back  from  Red 
1 60 


Roger   Drake 

City  with  a  diamond  drill  and  the  rest  of  the 
outfit,  and  had  started  in  to  look  for  copper. 
He  told  me  afterward  that  he  began  to  expect 
to  find  something  before  he  had  been  drilling 
an  hour,  and  that  he  had  quite  given  up  hope 
of  getting  anything  before  the  end  of  the  second 
day.  As  a  matter  of  fact  it  was  a  long  time 
before  we  struck.  My  own  confidence  wasn't 
severely  shaken,  though  I'll  admit  I  grew 
pretty  impatient  to  be  out  and  in  charge  of 
the  experiment  myself.  Now  that  we  know 
how  immense  the  deposit  was,  it's  hard  to 
understand  how  we  could  have  missed  it  so 
many  consecutive  times.  But  we  found  it  at 
last. 

It  was  on  a  day  which  for  more  reasons  than 
one  I  shall  never  forget.  It  was,  to  begin  with, 
the  day  when  my  patience  with  prospecting  at 
second  hand  or  by  hearsay  gave  out.  I  told 
Gus  before  he  started  off  in  the  morning  that 
after  dinner  I  meant  to  go  up  with  him  and 
have  a  look  at  the  place.  Barget  and  her 
father  smiled  indulgently  at  that  until  they 
saw  I  meant  it;  then  they  became  very  seri- 
ous, and  protested  vigorously.  For  two  or 
three  days  I  had  been  just  barely  out  of  bed ; 
I  had  hobbled  as  far  as  the  dining-room  table, 
so  of  course  even  I  didn't  contemplate  walk- 
M  161 


Roger   Drake 

ing.  But  I  said  if  they  would  get  out  the  litter 
on  which  they  had  brought  me  from  Red  City, 
and  could  find  four  men  to  carry  it,  there  was 
no  reason  in  the  world  why  I  shouldn't  go. 
Barget  at  once  pointed  out  that  in  going  up  or 
down  the  steep,  rough  path  which  led  to  the 
scene  of  operations  there  would  be  grave  dan- 
ger of  a  spill,  and  that  even  a  little  fall  would 
probably  have  serious  consequences.  There  was 
something  in  that,  but  I  made  light  of  the 
objection,  saying  that  my  arms  were  now  as 
good  as  anybody's,  and  I  ought  to  be  able  to 
hang  on  even  if  we  did  tip  a  little,  and  I  was 
so  determined  about  it  that  at  last  they  agreed. 

But  the  event  made  all  our  argument  unnec- 
essary. We  always  had  dinner  at  half-past 
twelve,  and  it  was  one  of  Father  Jansen's  foibles 
that  every  one  should  be  at  hand  punctually  at 
the  time.  So  when  the  hour  came  and  Gus 
failed  to  come  with  it,  we  wondered  a  little. 
We  waited  for  fifteen  minutes,  and  then  sat  down 
without  him,  but  Father  Jansen  told  one  of  the 
men  to  ride  out  to  him  and  see  what  the  reason 
was.  Half  an  hour  later  the  man  came  back 
bringing  word  from  Gus  that  he  would  be 
down  before  long. 

"  Was  that  all  he  said  ?  Didn't  he  give  any 
reason  ? " 

162 


if 

Roger   Drake 

The  man,  like  most  of  the  laborers  on  the 
farm,  was  a  Swede,  and  his  English  was  still 
fragmentary.  We  were  all  questioning  at  once 
and  he  could  make  nothing  of  it  all.  At  last 
Father  Jansen  motioned  us  to  silence  and  began 
questioning  him  in  his  own  language,  but  with- 
out getting  any  satisfaction  whatever. 

All  this  took  place  at  the  front  door, 
whither  we  had  repaired  when  we  heard  him 
riding  up  the  gravel  path.  After  Father 
Jansen  had  dismissed  the  man  we  still  stood 
in  the  doorway,  straining  our  eyes  down 
the  road.  And  all  because  Gus  was  a  little 
late  to  dinner. 

A  minute  or  two  later  Barget  made  out 
somebody  scrambling  down  the  lower  part  of 
the  path,  and  presently  we  all  saw  him  turn  up 
the  road  to  the  house.  As  he  came  nearer  we 
made  him  out  to  be  Gus,  and,  more  than  that, 
Gus  in  an  unusually  excited  frame  of  mind. 
He  was  running,  and  when  he  saw  us  in  the 
doorway  he  waved  his  hat.  Evidently  he 
hadn't  breath  enough  to  shout. 

"  He  has  found  it,"  said  Father  Jansen. 

"  He  thinks  he  has,  anyway,"  said  I. 
"  Maybe  something  has  fooled  him." 

But  there  was  no  doubt  about  it  after  I  saw 
the  sample  he  had  brought  with  him.  It  was 
163 


Roger   Drake 

apparently  nearly  pure  chalcocite,  or  copper 
glance. 

We  shook  hands  all  around,  and  when  Gus 
had  got  his  breath  he  told  us  about  it.  Some- 
where about  eleven  o'clock  he  had  struck  into 
a  decomposed  slaty  gangue  totally  different 
from  anything  he  had  been  drilling  through  be- 
fore. When  he  saw  that,  he  said,  he  made  up 
his  mind  to  get  through  it  and  find  what  was 
under  it  before  he  went  to  dinner,  even  if  he 
weren't  to  go  to  dinner  till  the  middle  of  next 
week. 

The  dinner  was  waiting  for  him  now,  how- 
ever, so  Barget  and  I  went  back  into  the  dining 
room  with  him  and  watched  him  eat  it,  sitting 
about  rather  silently,  for  we  were  all  too  ex- 
cited to  talk  in  anything  but  interjections. 
They  wanted  me  to  say  whether  I  thought  it 
a  good  strike  or  not,  but  of  course  I  couldn't 
tell  anything  about  that.  "  If  there's  much  of 
that  kind  of  ore,"  I  said,  "it's  a  wonderfully 
rich  mine.  It's  all  a  question  of  quantity 
now." 

"  I'm  glad  you  found  it  to-day,"  said  Barget, 
with  a  little  emphasis  on  the  last  word. 

"To-day?"  said  Gus.  "To-day?  Why, 
it's  your  birthday." 

She  nodded  affirmatively  when  I  turned  to 
164 


jf 

Roger   Drake 

her,  but  she  flushed  a  little.     "  I  didn't  mean 
that,"  she  said. 

"  Well,  I'm  glad,"  put  in  Gus,  frankly,  "be- 
cause if  I  hadn't  found  it  to-day,  it  wouldn't 
have  been  me  that  found  it." 

I  turned  to  Barget  again,  smiling,  for  I  sup- 
posed that  had  been  her  reason,  too.  But  she 
colored  higher  than  before,  and  shook  her 
head.  "  That  wasn't  what  I  meant  either, 
exactly."  She  hesitated  a  second,  and  then, 
as  if  impatient  with  herself  for  having  made 
so  much  of  the  matter,  she  said  —  to  Gus  :  — 

"  I  didn't  want  Mr.  Drake  to  go  up  there 
this  afternoon  ;  I  thought  he  was  likely  to  have 
a  fall  and  hurt  himself  badly,  and  that  it  would 
be  foolish  of  him  to  try.  So  I  am  glad  he 
hasn't  anything  to  go  for." 

Father  Jansen  came  in  just  as  Gus  announced 
that  he  was  going  back  to  drill  through  the  lode, 
in  order  to  be  able  to  report  to  me  how  thick  it 
was,  and  the  old  gentleman  said  he  would  go 
along  with  him  to  look  on.  They  went  off 
arm  in  arm,  —  so  they  always  walked  together, 
—  and  Barget  and  I  stood  in  the  doorway  and 
watched  them  down  the  path. 

"  They've  run  off  and  left  us  without  even  a 
{ by  your  leave,'"  said  I.  "Let's  retaliate  on 
them  by  having  a  birthday  party." 

165 


Roger   Drake 

She  nodded  enthusiastically.  "We'll  have 
it  outdoors,  won't  we  ?  Don't  you  think  you 
could  if  you  were  all  wrapped  up  ?  " 

I  laughed  at  her.  "  All  wrapped  up,  like  an 
invalid  ?  "  said  I.  "  I'm  as  fit  as  you  are,  all  but 
my  right  leg." 

Then  she  thought  of  something  better. 
"  Could  we  go  for  a  row  ?  Just  a  little  way 
up  the  river,  and  back,  and  I'd  be  very  care- 
ful of  you." 

Ah,  Barget,  Barget,  it  isn't  the  chalcocite 
that  Gus  pulled  up  in  his  drill  which  puts  that 
day  among  the  days  I  can  never  forget. 

Two  men  carried  me  down  to  the  little  skiff, 
in  a  kitchen  chair,  Barget  following  along  with 
an  armful  of  blankets  and  cushions.  They 
bundled  me  up  in  the  blankets  like  an  Indian 
papoose,  and  then  stowed  me  gingerly  in  the 
stern,  I  protesting  vigorously,  but  ineffectually, 
for  the  men  obeyed  Barget  to  the  letter.  The 
tiller  lines  lay  beside  me,  but  she  said  I  needn't 
bother  to  steer,  for  she  knew  the  river  back- 
ward. One  of  the  men  pushed  off;  she  shipped 
her  long  light  oars,  and  I,  lying  idly  in  my 
place,  watched  the  water  churning  about  them 
under  the  stroke,  and  the  sunlight  flashing  from 
them  on  the  feather. 

"You  row  well,"  I  commented. 
1 66 


Roger   Drake 

"  I  ought  to,"  she  answered  briefly.  "  Ole 
taught  me."  He  was  an  old  broken-down  sailor- 
man  whom  her  father  had  rescued  long  ago,  and 
who  never  afterward  left  him.  He  had  superin- 
tended the  aquatic  part  of  her  education.  She 
needed  her  strength  and  skill  to-day,  for  the 
wind  was  blowing  freshly  down  the  river,  aid- 
ing the  current,  itself  no  mean  antagonist.  After 
a  while  I  noticed  that  she  was  out  of  breath, 
and  I  suggested  that  we  turn  back,  but  she 
laughed  and  shook  her  head.  "  I'm  taking 
you  somewhere,"  she  said.  "  It's  not  much 
farther." 

It  was  at  the  head  of  Father  Jansen's  valley, 
where  the  cliffs  which  bound  his  little  domain 
draw  together  again.  There  is  a  little  cove 
under  the  north  bank,  and  the  cliff  behind  it 
rises  less  precipitously  than  elsewhere,  and  in 
three  distinct  terraces. 

"  My  summer  house  is  there,"  said  Barget, 
indicating  the  lowest  of  them.  "  Do  you  think 
I  could  lift  you  out  ?  I  could  if  you  helped  a 
little.  And  it's  such  a  happy  little  place." 

We  tried  it,  and  with  a  little  engineering, 
succeeded.  Once  out  of  the  boat,  it  was  easy ; 
for  it  wasn't  far,  and  with  one  arm  across 
Barget's  shoulders  and  a  stick  in  the  other 
hand,  I  got  on  very  well. 
167 


Roger  Drake 

The  place  was  a  grassy  little  plateau  where 
the  wind  didn't  blow  and  the  afternoon  sun 
shone  warm.  An  old  oak  tree,  its  tattered 
foliage  already  turned  brown,  stood  in  the 
middle,  and  surrounding  it  were  a  few  bushes 
flaming  with  the  colors  of  the  frost.  That  was 
Barget's  summer  house,  and  there  we  spent  the 
afternoon.  She  had  brought  a  book  for  each 
of  us  —  mine  was  the  monograph  on  pyritic 
smelting  —  and  a  couple  of  hastily  constructed 
sandwiches,  so  our  resources  were  indefinite. 

Barget  amused  herself  with  a  dozen  occupa- 
tions. She  gathered  the  last  of  the  goldenrod 
and  the  thistles  to  carry  home ;  when  the  sun 
sank  lower,  she  brought  in  an  armful  of  dead 
branches  and  skilfully  kindled  a  fire  on  a  big 
flat  stone  which  had  evidently  served  the  pur- 
pose before.  She  stretched  out  luxuriously  on 
the  grass  and  read  her  book,  and  at  intervals 
she  talked  to  me.  I  had  thought  before  that 
I  knew  her  pretty  well,  but  this  was  a  new 
Barget.  She  talked  to  me  as  though  I  were 
but  a  sort  of  outlying  part  of  herself ;  queer  little 
fancies  ventured  shyly  out  at  first,  but  after- 
wards more  boldly,  sounding  strangely  enough 
to  the  man  I  knew  myself  to  be,  but  finding  in 
me  a  new  chord  which  understood  and  echoed 
them. 

168 


Roger  Drake 

But  if  Barget  was  simply  herself  in  this  little 
summer  house  of  hers,  the  place  or  the  time 
seemed  to  cast  a  spell  over  me.  I  neither  read 
nor  talked.  I  watched  the  shadows  lengthen 
and  the  face  of  the  river  grow  brighter  as  the 
sun's  beams  struck  it  more  aslant,  but  never 
for  long  at  a  time,  for  my  gaze  always  went  back 
to  Barget ;  to  her  boyish  face  with  the  deep, 
deep  blue  eyes,  to  her  sturdy,  athletic  figure, 
clad  fittingly  enough  somehow  in  a  shabby 
shooting-coat  with  infinite  pockets,  and  a  pair 
of  rubber  boots. 

I  went  over  a  good  deal  of  my  life  in  that 
afternoon,  and  I  seemed  to  understand  it  better 
than  ever  before.  I  thought  about  Fletcher, 
and  I  remembered  how  he  had  puzzled  me 
sometimes  with  his  questions  about  my  aims 
and  purposes.  I  saw  how  the  acts  of  self- 
devotion  I  had  seen  in  him  and  in  Father 
Jansen  and  one  or  two  other  men  I  had  known 
a  little,  sprang  not  from  the  whim  of  a  moment, 
but  from  a  principle  which  guided  their  lives. 
But  always,  after  dwelling  upon,  those  matters 
awhile,  my  thoughts  came  home  again  to 
Barget. 

High  up  in  the  sky,  and  stretching  down 
toward  the  horizon,  was  a  great  array  of 
fleecy  cirrus  clouds,  snowy  white  until  the  sun 

169 


Roger   Drake 

sank  low  enough  to  set  them  all  aglow.  I  lay 
and  looked  at  them,  and  when  I  turned  to  her 
I  saw  that  her  eyes  were  on  them  too. 

"  What  does  it  make  you  think  of,  Barget  ?  " 
I  asked. 

"  Of  battalions,  and  legions,  and  armies  of 
angels  marching,"  she  said,  and  then  quoted 
softly, 

"  '  And  the  choirs  that  dwell  on  high 
Shall  reecho  through  the  sky, 

Hallelujah!' 

"  Don't  you  wish  you  could  hear  them 
sing  ?  "  she  asked. 

She  lay  quietly  awhile  longer,  then  she  rose, 
slipped  the  two  books  into  her  pockets,  and 
coming  over  to  me,  held  out  both  her  hands. 

In  an  instant  I  understood.  I  had  forgotten 
that  I  was  lame ;  she  meant  only  that  we  must 
be  going  back  and  had  come  to  help  me  get 
to  my  feet.  But  just  in  that  instant  as  she 
stood  before  me  holding  out  her  hands,  my 
heart  gave  a  great  leap  of  joy.  I  knew,  I  knew 
now  what  it  meant. 

She  had  me  get  into  the  bow  of  the  skiff 
going  home,  while  she  sat  high  in  the  stern 
and  paddled  us  down  the  current  with  an  oar, 
Indian  fashion.  She  was  silent  now,  too,  and 

her  face  seemed  a  little  troubled. 
170 


jtf 

Roger   Drake 

"  What  are  you  thinking  about  ?  "  she  asked 
me  at  last. 

"  I  have  the  name  for  the  mine,  Barget," 
said  I.  "It's  the  Birthday." 

"  The  Birthday  ? "  she  said.  "  Because  it's 
my  birthday  ? " 

"  Yes,"  said  I.  "  Because  it's  yours."  But 
something  else  had  been  born  that  day,  that 
very  day. 


171 


CHAPTER   VIII 

TWO  weeks  later  I  was  back  in  Red  City, 
finding  out,  as  we  almost  always  do  when 
we  have  been  laid  on  the  shelf  for  a  while,  that 
everything  had  worried  along  without  me  al- 
most as  well  as  if  I  had  been  on  hand  every 
day.  Of  course  the  expense  account  for  those 
two  months  was  larger  than  it  would  have  been 
if  I'd  been  about,  but  so  far  as  I  could  see  that 
was  all.  As  a  rule  we  aren't  nearly  so  indis- 
pensable as  we  think. 

I  have  said  before  that  Red  City  was  having 
a  boom ;  that  seemed  to  be  going  on  harder 
than  ever  when  I  came  back.  They  were  doing 
things  so  fast  that  the  general  aspect  had  notice- 
ably improved  just  in  the  short  time  I  had  been 
away.  Lawrence  had  moved  out  of  the  board- 
ing-house when  I  came  back,  and  when  I  went 
to  look  him  up  in  his  office,  he  had  moved  that 
too.  I  rounded  him  up  at  last  in  a  brand-new, 
black-walnut,  furnace-heated  pair  of  rooms  on 
the  third  floor  of  the  new  bank  building.  That 
172 


Roger   Drake 

I  took  for  a  pretty  good  indication,  if  I  had 
needed  it,  that  Red  City's  boom  was  on  a  good 
solid  basis.  You  could  never  stampede  Law- 
rence with  mere  appearances. 

We  had  a  good  deal  to  talk  about;  for  besides 
his  representing  my  holdings  in  the  Northwest- 
ern Ore  Company,  he  had  been  looking  after, 
informally,  some  of  the  other  irons  I  had  in  the 
fire.  He  told  me  he  thought  Reech  wanted  to 
sell  his  stock  in  the  Northwestern.  Evidently 
he  didn't  appreciate  that  water  power  ;  the  time 
hadn't  quite  come  for  it  yet.  With  a  new  mine 
on  my  hands  to  develop,  I  thought  I  should 
probably  need  all  my  ready  money,  but  I  did 
appreciate  the  water  power,  and  I  told  Law- 
rence that  if  he  could  get  Reech's  stock  at  a 
figure  which  I  named,  I  wished  he  would  buy 
it  for  me.  I  told  him  also  that  if  things  went 
right  for  the  next  three  months,  I  meant  to 
resign  the  management  of  the  company. 

"  Going  to  retire  ?  "  he  asked. 

"You  can  call  it  that  if  you  like,"  said  I. 
"  I'm  going  to  retire  from  the  firing  lines  up 
into  a  headquarters  tent  with  a  pair  of  field 
glasses." 

That  was  something  I  was  really  most  anx- 
ious to  do,  and  I  was  waiting  only  to  be  sure 
that  my  mine  was  what  I  thought  it  was  before 


Roger   Drake 

I  took  the  step.  It  demanded  my  attention 
far  more  than  the  smelter.  One  of  the  first 
things  I  did  after  coming  back  was  to  pick  up 
a  competent  young  mining  engineer  and  pack 
him  off  up  the  gorge  to  help  Gus.  I  can't 
remember  his  name,  but  he  did  his  work  well, 
anyway.  The  Birthday  began  to  pay  for  itself 
in  a  very  short  time,  but  it  was  not  till  spring 
that  we  knew  what  a  real  bonanza  we  had,  or 
opened  up  the  main  lode  at  all,  for  it  lay  at 
some  distance  beneath  the  vein  that  Gus  had 
drilled  into. 

In  the  meantime  I  had  made  another  journey 
East.  That  came  about  as  the  result  of  a  letter 
I  had  from  Fletcher.  He  had  got  his  new 
dynamo  right  at  last,  and  of  course  the  news 
delighted  me  ;  if  Fletcher  was  satisfied  with  the 
mechanics  of  it,  it  was  good,  mechanically.  But 
about  the  commercial  side  of  it  Fletcher  knew 
little  and  cared  less,  and  a  vague  word  or  two 
which  he  had  put  at  the  end  of  the  letter  about 
disposing  of  the  patents  and  arranging  for  the 
manufacturing  of  it,  alarmed  me.  It  wasn't  a 
good  time  for  me  to  get  off,  but  I  knew  that  I 
could  never  get  an  understanding  of  the  situa- 
tion from  him,  nor  could  he  profit  by  any  cau- 
tionings  of  mine  unless  we  were  face  to  face,  so 
I  packed  up  and  went. 

<74 


Roger   Drake 

I  was  glad  I  had  done  so,  for  he  had  made 
at  the  best  a  rather  bad  bargain,  and  was  neglect- 
ing to  take  advantage  of  the  only  redeeming 
feature  of  it ;  namely,  the  opportunity  to  take 
up  at  a  very  moderate  price  a  certain  amount 
of  stock  in  the  company  which  was  to  manu- 
facture the  dynamo.  The  time  limit  which  was 
set  by  the  contract  to  this  opportunity  had 
almost  expired,  and  Fletcher  had  apparently 
never  even  considered  buying  the  stock,  so  I 
spent  a  busy  day  or  two  over  the  matter.  I 
didn't  want  to  advise  him  to  get  rid  of  his  own 
snug  little  property  for  the  purpose,  I  hadn't 
the  ready  money  myself  to  put  up,  so  I  had  to 
raise  it,  and,  as  I  say,  it  made  me  step  lively. 
But  it  was  worth  while,  for  that  stock  has  made 
Fletcher  a  rich  man. 

We  had  a  good  visit,  too,  talking  over  the 
world  in  general  as  we  used  to  do  in  the  quiet 
days  when  I  was  his  secretary,  but  at  last  we 
came  down  to  something  particular.  "  Tell  me 
about  Stanley,"  said  I. 

He  had  never  spoken  of  either  of  them  in 
his  letters,  so  he  began  at  the  beginning.  He 
said  that  Stanley  married  her  just  a  few  weeks 
after  I  went  away.  They  had  been  very  gay, 
had  entertained  a  great  deal,  and  all  that.  He 
added  that  she  had  a  long  sickness  during  the 

ITS 


Roger   Drake 

first  summer  and  it  changed  her  almost  past 
recognition. 

"  I  have  seen  her  two  or  three  times  since," 
he  went  on.  "  Her  old  beauty  is  quite  gone, 
yet  it  has  left  something.  I  think  it  is  some- 
thing that  the  consciousness  of  her  beauty  had 
taught  her.  A  stranger  passing  her  on  the 
street  would  have  to  look  at  her  to-day  just  as 
he  would  have  had  to  before." 

He  added  that  Stanley  looked  a  good  deal 
older  this  last  year,  but  that  according  to  Archi- 
bald, who  saw  a  good  deal  of  both  of  them, 
they  were  exceedingly  happy.  "  They  ought 
to  be,"  he  said.  "  They're  well  mated." 

"Well,"  said  I,  "so  far  as  I'm  concerned 
he's  welcome  to  all  the  happiness  he  can  find. 
I  wish  him  no  bad  fortune.  He's  to  blame,  of 
course,  but  then  who  knows  what  the  pressure 
on  him  was,  or  how  hard  he  tried  not  to  do  it, 
or  how  honestly  he  meant  to  do  something 
else  ?  I'm  not  so  sure,  if  I  loved  a  girl,  really, 
and  she'd  agreed  to  marry  some  chap  she  wasn't 
sure  she  cared  anything  about  —  well,  I  don't 
know.  Anyway,  I'll  have  nothing  against  him 
so  long  as  he  leaves  me  alone." 

He  looked  at  me  in  a  curious  sort  of  way, 
and  then  nodded  his  head.  What  I  had  said 
was  true.  It  had  been  true  ever  since  the  after- 
176 


if 

Roger   Drake 

noon  when  Barget  and  I  had  celebrated  her 
birthday. 

I  hadn't  much  time  for  visiting,  so  as  soon 
as  Fletcher's  business  was  settled,  I  went  back 
to  Red  City  and  to  work  again.  Reech  had 
been  haggling  along  with  Lawrence  over  that 
stock  of  his,  but  he  finally  came  down  to  the 
figure  I  had  named,  and  Lawrence  bought 
it  for  me.  It  gave  me  control  all  together  of 
about  two-thirds  of  the  stock. 

Meanwhile  I  was  working  along,  eight  hours 
a  day  at  the  smelter,  for  I  had  made  up  my 
mind  to  keep  at  it  until  the  Birthday  was  an 
assured  success.  I  managed  to  go  to  Father 
Jansen's  on  Sunday  once  in  a  while,  though  in 
winter  it  was  a  long  way  off.  As  I  have  said, 
it  was  along  in  the  spring  when  Gus  sent  down 
word  of  our  big  strike.  I  went  up  at  once  to 
convince  myself,  but  there  wasn't  any  doubt 
about  it.  The  time  had  come  for  me  to  retire 
from  the  firing  line. 

When  I  went  back  to  town,  the  first  thing  I 
did  was  to  have  my  stock  in  the  Northwestern 
Ore  Company  transferred  on  the  books  to  my 
own  name.  Then  I  handed  in  my  resignation 
as  manager  of  the  company,  and  at  the  annual 
meeting,  which  came  along  in  a  week  or  two, 
elected  myself  president  instead. 

N  177 


Roger   Drake 

I  took  a  suite  of  offices  in  one  of  the  new 
buildings,  and  hired  a  stenographer  and  an  office 
boy.  Then  I  shut  myself  up  in  the  inside 
room  and  sat  down  to  think.  It  was  a  luxury, 
you  may  believe,  after  working  amid  thousands 
of  distracting  details,  as  I  had  done  for  so  long, 
to  have  all  minor  matters  stopped  and  attended 
to  in  the  outer  office.  But  it  swamped  that 
stenographer. 

With  nothing  to  do  but  plan,  it  didn't  take  me 
long  to  make  up  my  mind  as  to  what  my  first 
few  moves  should  be.  I  began  with  something 
that  I  ought  to  have  had  long  before ;  namely, 
a  telegraph  line  from  the  Birthday  right  down 
to  my  outer  office.  It  was  so  convenient  that 
at  first,  whenever  I  used  it,  I  felt  ashamed  of 
myself  for  having  done  without  it  so  long. 

The  next  move  was  more  important.  I  de- 
cided to  build  a  railroad.  Only  a  little  one,  to 
be  sure;  from  the  Birthday  to  the  smelter, 
about  twenty-five  miles.  We  had  been  send- 
ing our  ore  down  just  as  they  were  doing  from 
the  Croesus,  and  as  Father  Jansen  sent  down 
his  wheat ;  namely,  on  rafts.  That  was  cheap 
and  easy  from  June  to  December,  though  get- 
ting supplies  back  was  never  a  simple  matter, 
but  the  main  difficulty  with  the  system  came  in 
the  other  half  of  the  year,  when  we  were  all 
178 


Roger   Drake 

practically  cut  off.  If  Stanley  had  been  on  the 
ground  himself,  or  if  his  manager,  Jackson,  had 
been  a  big  enough  man  for  the  position  he  held, 
they  would  have  had  a  railroad  down  from  the 
Croesus  long  before. 

It  was  no  great  matter,  either.  Of  course 
there  wasn't  any  difficulty  about  the  right  of 
way,  and  the  surveyor's  report  showed  that 
there  would  be  less  cuts  and  trestles  than  I 
had  looked  for.  We  did  not  have  to  cross 
the  river  at  all.  There  was  timber  for  the 
trestles  standing  almost  where  we  wanted  it  and 
the  slag  heap  at  the  smelter  provided  what  little 
ballast  we  needed.  (That  was  before  I  had  be- 
gun running  my  slag  into  bricks  and  selling  it 
for  building  and  paving  purposes ;  we  have  to 
learn  how,  a  little  at  a  time.) 

The  day  I  got  the  surveyor's  report  I 
ordered  the  rails  and  started  a  gang  at  work, 
and  from  then  on  until  I  made  the  first  trip 
over  the  completed  line  in  the  cab  of  one  of 
the  three  locomotives  I  had  bought  of  the  Red 
City  and  Texas  —  they  weren't  very  modern, 
but  they  answered  my  purpose  —  we  kept  the 
work  rushing  without  a  let-up. 

There,  were  some  advantages  resulting  from 
the  change  I  had  made  in  my  way  of  living, 
besides  the  leisure  it  gave  me  to  look  more  in- 
179 


Roger   Drake 

telligently  after  all  my  diversified  interests.  I 
made  a  good  many  pleasant  acquaintances 
among  the  new  people  in  the  town,  and,  in 
general,  I  felt  as  though  I'd  come  back  to  civil- 
ization again.  But  there  were  compensating 
disadvantages,  too.  I  was  no  longer  allowed 
to  go  ahead  quietly  with  the  management  of 
my  own  affairs,  for  there  sprang  up  a  whole 
horde  of  people  anxious  to  meddle  in  them. 
Some  were  merely  curious  to  know  how  much 
I  had,  and  how  I  had  got  it,  and  they  didn't 
confine  themselves  to  guessing,  either ;  but 
there  were  a  lot  more  who  wanted  to  get  some- 
thing out  of  me.  And  if  I  made  some  new 
friends,  I  soon  found,  also,  that  I  made  new 
enemies.  That  was  only  the  beginning  of  it. 

We  had  had  a  daily  paper  for  some  time,  but 
along  about  now  it  acquired  a  modern  press 
and  a  modern  editor  from  the  East,  and  began 
to  assume  the  function  of  forming  and  direct- 
ing public  opinion.  Almost  the  first  thing  it 
did  was  to  attack  me  for  maintaining  a  public 
nuisance ;  namely,  the  Northwestern  smelter. 

Well,  of  course  the  smelter  was  a  nuisance, 
though  Red  City  had  grown  and  thrived  so 
long  on  sulphur  fumes  that  it  took  them  in- 
stead of  air  quite  as  a  matter  of  course.  But 
I  talked  it  over  with  the  other  directors,  and  we 
1 80 


jf 

Roger   Drake 

decided  that  this,  after  all,  was  perhaps  no  reason 
why  the  nuisance  shouldn't  be  abated.  So  I 
made  a  communication  to  the  board  of  alder- 
men to  that  effect,  and  we  put  in  a  plant  for 
collecting  the  gas  and  using  it  in  the  manufac- 
ture of  sulphuric  acid.  I  don't  know  whether 
the  town  was  grateful  or  not,  but  the  move 
didn't  awaken  any  great  enthusiasm  on  the 
part  of  the  Argus-,  for  it  took  all  the  credit, 
warned  me  to  be  more  careful  in  the  future, 
and  informed  the  public  that  I  had  only  acted 
in  my  own  selfish  interests  anyway,  as  I  should 
sell  the  acid  at  an  exorbitant  profit. 

That,  with  the  Argus,  was  merely  the  begin- 
ning of  a  campaign  of  denunciation  and  abuse. 
Sometimes  it  was  veiled  in  general  terms — "cor- 
porate greed,"  and  the  like ;  sometimes  it  was 
flagrantly  personal.  I  paid  no  attention  to  it 
whatever,  for  it  didn't  seem  to  me  that  it  did 
me  any  harm.  But  some  of  my  friends,  and 
particularly  Lawrence,  thought  differently,  and 
one  evening  he  and  I  had  a  talk  which  ended 
with  his  speaking  about  it. 

We  had  been  having  a  meeting  of  the  direc- 
tors of  the  Northwestern  Ore  Company,  and 
after  it  was  over  I  went  to  his  rooms  with  him 
for  a  chat.  I  was  feeling  pretty  good,  for  the 
meeting  had  brought  out  what  splendid  shape 
•i  8 1 


Roger   Drake 

the  company  was  in.  Of  course  with  the  full 
development  of  the  half-dozen  great  mines  in 
the  district  we  had  ceased  to  do  all  the  smelt- 
ing ;  three  of  them  did  it  for  themselves.  But 
we  had  enough  to  satisfy  the  most  captious  and 
the  most  sanguine. 

"I  haven't  any  ambition  to  retire  from  busi- 
ness," said  Lawrence,  "  but  I  really  believe  that 
if  I'd  done  as  much  as  you  have  and  had  as 
much,  I'd  stop  right  where  you  are  now." 

"  There  are  two  things  more  that  I  want  to 
do,"  said  I.  "When  they're  done,  I  think  I'll 
be  ready  to  quit.  One  is  to  get  all  the  copper 
industry  of  the  section  under  one  management, 
and  the  other  to  give  that  same  management 
control  of  the  Red  City  and  Texas  Railroad." 

The  railroad  was  only  about  two  hundred 
miles  long,  and  of  course  didn't  get  anywhere 
within  hailing  distance  of  Texas.  It  had  been 
built  during  the  Granger  period  by  the  farmers 
themselves.  They  may  have  set  out,  in  their 
enthusiasm,  to  carry  the  line  through  and  justify 
its  name;  though  why  they  should  have  thought 
they  wanted  to  take  anything  to  Texas,  or  what 
there  was  to  take,  were  questions  they  couldn't 
have  answered.  Anyway,  there  was  never  any 
occasion  to  ask  them,  for  their  money  and  their 
enthusiasm  had  pretty  well  given  out  before 
182 


Roger   Drake 

they  got  to  the  junction  at  Bridgetown,  about 
two  hundred  miles  south  of  Red  City,  and  they 
had  never  got  any  farther. 

"  If  I  were  given  to  expressing  offhand 
opinions,"  said  Lawrence,  after  meditating 
awhile,  "  I  should  say  that  you  could  never  do 
it." 

"Where's  the  impossibility?"  I  demanded. 
"  It  wouldn't  take  a  great  deal  to  buy  the  whole 
road, — lock,  stock,  and  barrel.  All  I  want  is  the 
control  of  it,  and  I  don't  believe  it'll  be  hard 
to  buy  enough  stock.  I  don't  believe  they're 
making  very  much  money,  and  they're  over 
their  Granger  nonsense  by  now,  so  I  should 
think  they'd  let  go  easy,  many  of  them." 

"  I  wasn't  thinking  of  the  railroad,"  said 
Lawrence.  "It  was  the  other  half  of  the  plan, 
getting  all  the  copper  interests  in  the  district 
under  one  management,  and  by  that  I  suppose 
you  mean  yours.  I  don't  see  just  how  you 
mean  to  do  it,  or  why  you  wish  to  do  it." 

"  Why,  this  is  the  way  it  looks  to  me,"  said 
I.  "  Here  are  half  a  dozen  great  properties 
right  in  this  section,  all  of  the  same  kind. 
There's  Cooper  and  Rosenblum  at  Ore  Sum- 
mit, and  the  Halstead  mine  and  Armstrong's 
White  Eagle,  besides  that  German,  Franken- 
burgher,  down  the  river,  and  Croesus  and  the 
183 


Roger   Drake 

Birthday.  Now,  we're  all  after  as  much  as  we 
can  get,  all  getting  rich  the  same  way,  all  rich 
and  strong  enough  to  do  a  lot  of  damage  if  we 
get  to  fighting.  And  what's  more  likely  than 
that  we  get  to  fighting  ?  The  situation  is  made 
for  it. 

"  Now  what  I  want  to  do,"  I  went  on,  "  is 
to  head  off  that  fight.  I  want  an  arrangement 
between  us  so  that  my  profit  will  be  Halstead's 
profit,  for  instance,  instead  of  Halstead's  loss. 
I  haven't  the  details  worked  out  yet,  exactly, 
but  the  scheme  that  strikes  me  best  is  to  pool 
our  stock,  put  it  in  trust,  whatever  you  like, 
under  one  board  of  directors.  I  think  it  won't 
be  hard  to  put  that  through.  I  think  the  rest 
will  see  it  as  I  do,  unless  it's  the  Croesus, 
and  when  all  the  rest  are  in,  he'll  follow  fast 
enough." 

But  Lawrence  shook  his  head.  "  I'm  afraid 
it's  too  late,"  he  said.  "  The  fight  has  already 
begun,  in  my  opinion." 

I  didn't  believe  he  was  right,  and  I  said  so. 
As  far  as  I  could  see  we  were  peaceable  enough. 

"  The  Argus  has  not  been  peaceable." 

"  Do  you  mean  its  attacks  on  me  ?  That's 
nothing  but  wind.  I'm  a  good  mark,  and 
abuse  helps  sell  the  paper.  There's  nothing 
back  of  it." 

184 


Roger  Drake 


Still  Lawrence  shook  his  head.  "  I  disagree 
with  you  absolutely.  I'm  not  yet  satisfied  who 
is  behind  it,  but  I'm  sure  some  one  is,  some 
one  of  those  interests  you've  been  naming 
over." 

"  What's  he  gaining  by  it  ? "  I  asked  in- 
credulously. 

He  brought  his  fist  down  on  the  table,  em- 
phasizing every  word  with  a  blow.  "  He's 
gaining  public  sentiment  by  it."  Then  he 
went  on :  "  You  ask  me  what  that  means  in  an 
affair  like  this.  I  tell  you  it  means  everything. 
In  every  one  of  these  great  semi-public  struggles 
there  comes  a  certain  point  where  public  senti- 
ment takes  a  hand.  Take  Jim  Fisk's  raid  on 
the  Albany  and  Susquehannah  for  just  one 
instance.  There  are  plenty  more  like  it.  And 
when  public  sentiment  does  take  a  hand,  it  set- 
tles the  business,  and  does  it  promptly.  The 
man  who  has  begun  this  attack  by  exciting  it 
against  you  knows  what  he's  about.  Think  it 
over." 

As  I  have  said,  Lawrence  wasn't  at  all  a 
panicky  chap,  and  I  had  a  great  deal  of  respect 
for  his  opinions,  but  in  this  case  I  couldn't  take 
his  advice  very  seriously.  But  a  few  days  after 
our  talk  I  had  a  letter  from  Fletcher  which 
really  set  me  thinking. 

185 


Roger   Drake 

"I've  a  bit  of  news  for  you,"  it  ran,  "which 
Fm  afraid  will  be  unwelcome.  Archibald  tells 
me  that  the  Stanleys  —  George  and  his  wife  — 
have  decided  to  move  to  Red  City.  They  expect 
to  stay  as  long  as  may  be  necessary ',  perhaps  for 
several  years.  I  believe  they  mean  to  build  a 
house  out  there.  He  gives  out  that  they  are  going 
to  look  after  his  interests.  Whether  that  involves 
an  attack  on  yours  or  not  you  must  decide  for  your- 

7/-» 

self. 

Of  course,  I  couldn't  decide  until  something 
further  should  turn  up.  I  looked  about  as 
well  as  I  could,  and  then  dismissed  the  matter 
from  my  mind  for  the  present.  Meantime  I 
had  enough  else  to  concern  myself  with. 
Lawrence  sent  me  word  one  day  that  he  knew 
where  he  could  get  me  a  block  of  Red  City 
and  Texas  stock  if  I  wanted  it.  It  was  at  a 
very  reasonable  price,  so  I  took  it,  and  further 
told  him  to  pick  up  all  of  it  that  came  his  way 
at  anywhere  near  the  same  figure. 

But  whether  it  was  from  his  talk  with  me,  or 
Fletcher's  letter,  the  feeling  was  growing  on  me 
that  if  I  wanted  control  of  that  road,  I  must  get 
it  at  once,  before  this  vaguely  looming  trouble 
came  on.  While  I  was  still  thinking  about  it, 
the  very  instrument  for  my  purpose  turned  up, 
ready  to  hand,  in  the  person  of  Reech. 
186 


Roger   Drake 

I  hadn't  heard  of  him  since  I  had  bought 
his  stock  in  the  Northwestern,  but  I  believe 
he  had  taken  the  money  away  and  dropped  it 
in  some  lightning  wealth  producer  or  other. 
However  that  may  be,  here  he  was  back  again, 
looking  a  bit  seedy  and  anxious  to  make  a 
fresh  start.  I  had  just  such  a  job  for  him  as 
always  brought  out  his  best  talents,  and  he 
took  it  gladly  and  set  right  about  it.  He  was 
to  go  down  the  line  of  the  railroad ;  drop  in 
casually  on  the  farmers  who  owned  the  stock 
in  it,  and  buy  it  of  them  as  quietly  and  as 
cheaply  as  possible.  I  said  nothing  to  him 
about  the  instructions  I  had  given  Lawrence, 
and  which  held  good,  to  buy  whatever  of  that 
stock  he  could  find.  It  came  in  easily  enough 
at  first,  though  in  small  blocks,  and  I  expected 
to  get  in  complete  control  of  the  line  with  no 
trouble  at  all. 

All  through  those  days  and  for  some  time 
afterward,  while  I  was  extending  and  consoli- 
dating and  acquiring,  doing  my  very  utmost, 
my  old  dream  of  getting  rich  was  quite  forgot- 
ten, though  that  may  be  a  paradox.  In  fact, 
my  eye  was  not  on  the  results  of  the  work,  but 
on  the  work  itself,  or  if  it  was  on  the  results,  I 
regarded  them  quite  impersonally.  Lawrence 
had  been  mistaken  in  attributing  my  projected 
187 


Roger   Drake 

copper  "  combine "  to  a  desire  to  have  it  all 
myself.  What  I  wanted  to  do  was  incorporate 
that  industry  throughout  the  entire  district, 
into  an  economical,  efficient  system  ;  to  bring 
it  up  to  the  level  of  its  highest  capability.  I 
planned  the  district  just  as  an  architect  plans  a 
building,  or,  better,  as  a  mechanic  designs  a 
locomotive,  to  develop  as  much  power  as  pos- 
sible out  of  as  little  fuel,  and  to  waste  as  little 
as  possible  in  noise  and  friction ;  and  that  I 
was  to  live  in  the  building,  or  ride  behind  the 
engine,  had  nothing  to  do  with  it. 

I  used  to  forget  that  I  was  a  very  rich  man, 
that  the  wealth  which  was  pouring  in  on  me 
was  mine,  mine  to  do  with  absolutely  as  I 
pleased.  I  lived  right  along  in  the  same 
boarding-house  where  I  had  first  settled 
down.  I  might  have  stayed  there  longer 
than  I  did  if  a  chance  conversation  I  over- 
heard between  two  trainmen  on  my  little  rail- 
road out  to  the  Birthday  hadn't  furnished  me 
with  an  idea. 

They  were,  it  seems,  criticising  my  penuri- 
ousness,  as  shown  by  the  fact  that  I  used  to 
ride  out  to  the  mine  in  the  cab  of  a  locomotive. 

"  If  I  was  as  rich  as  him,"  said  one,  "  I'd  not 
be  perchin'  on  the  fireman's  box."  He  added 
that  we'd  see  him  rolling  out  luxurious  on  a 
1 88 


Roger   Drake 

private  car  with  brass  railings  and  two  niggers 
and  a  Chinaman  in  full  dress  suits. 

A  private  car  was  a  distinctly  good  idea.  I 
should  have  stepped  up  and  thanked  the  man 
if  I  hadn't  been  afraid  of  scaring  him  to  death. 
Many  people  had  suggested  that  I  ought  to 
build  a  house,  but  I  wasn't  ready  for  that  yet. 
But  a  private  car  was  just  what  I  wanted.  I 
ordered  it  as  soon  as  I  could  figure  out  just 
how  I  wished  it  arranged,  and  when  in  due 
time  it  arrived,  it  gave  me  a  sensation  of  genu- 
ine pleasure ;  the  first,  of  that  kind,  I  think 
that  my  wealth  had  ever  brought  me. 

I  meant  to  live  in  it,  and  it  was  furnished  as 
completely  as  possible  with  that  end  in  view. 
There  was  my  sitting  room,  with  desk,  easy- 
chairs,  bookcases,  and  even  a  picture  or  two, 
and  the  platform  outside  was  extended  into  a 
little  veranda,  brass  railed  just  as  my  humble 
and  unconscious  adviser  had  suggested.  There 
was  a  bedroom,  a  bath,  a  kitchen,  where  I 
installed  an  excellent  Chinese  cook ;  there  was 
a  room  for  my  stenographer  when  I  wanted 
him  to  travel  with  me ;  there  was  everything, 
in  short,  that  I  could  want. 

My  daily  routine  after  that  car  went  into 
commission  was  like  a  new  life.  In  the  after- 
noon when  I'd  finished  my  work  in  Red  City> 
189 


Roger   Drake 

I  stepped  inside  my  movable  home,  and  had  it 
hauled  up  the  river  to  the  place  where  it  lay 
all  night.  I  had  picked  out  that  place  with 
care,  and  built  a  special,  private  track  to  it. 
It  was  beyond  the  mine  with  its  little  village  of 
workmen's  cottages,  quite  by  itself  at  the  corner 
of  the  cliff,  where  I  could  look  down  on  Father 
Jansen's  valley  and  the  lights  twinkling  from 
his  windows.  And  from  my  brass-railed  front 
veranda  a  graded  path  ran  down  to  the  valley 
just  about  where  we  had  seen  Gus  come  run- 
ning and  scrambling  with  his  sample  of  chalco- 
cite  on  Barget's  birthday.  But  of  that,  by 
and  by. 

I  used  to  spend  the  night  up  there  among 
the  pines.  In  the  morning  after  breakfast  I 
looked  over  the  run  of  things  at  the  mine,  and 
then  went  spinning  back  to  Red  City.  With 
that  routine  established  I  forgot  what  it  was  to 
be  tired.  But  I  must  be  getting  back  to  some- 
thing more  serious. 

I  have  said  that  I  thought  a  good  deal  about 
Fletcher's  news,  that  Stanley  was  coming  out 
to  Red  City.  It  connected  itself,  as  it  was 
bound  to,  with  Lawrence's  repeated  warnings, 
—  that  somebody  was  preparing  to  make  war 
upon  me,  a  commercial  war  such  as  the  in- 
dustrial history  of  our  country  knows  too  well. 
190 


Roger  Drake 

They  are  common  enough,  —  and  bad  enough 
—  in  these  days,  but  I  think  they  are  not  so 
common,  nor  so  recklessly  unscrupulous,  as 
they  used  to  be  twenty  years  ago. 

If  there  were  a  possible  way  to  avoid  being 
drawn  into  such  a  conflict,  I  wanted  to  take  it, 
and  it  was  so  clear  to  me  that  the  better  course 
is  to  work  together,  that  I  felt  confident  that  I 
could  make  any  intelligent  man  see  it  as  I  did. 
I  thought  at  first  of  writing  Stanley  a  letter,  and 
when  I  decided  that  that  wouldn't  do,  I  thought 
seriously  of  going  East  to  talk  the  matter  over 
with  him.  But  there  were  objections  to  that 
course,  too,  so  at  last  I  made  up  my  mind  to 
wait  until  he  came  to  Red  City. 

He  was  a  long  while  coming,  but  at  last,  one 
day,  I  learned  that  he  was  in  town,  and  I  called 
at  the  hotel  where  he  was  staying  and  asked  for 
him.  He  was  in  the  writing-room,  and  he  came 
out  almost  immediately  into  the  rotunda  where 
I  was  waiting  for  him. 

"  Was  the  boy  right  in  saying  you  had  asked 
for  me  ? "  He  put  the  question  with  a  little 
emphasis  on  the  last  word. 

I  assented,  saying  that  I  had  called  upon  him 
on  a  matter  of  business. 

"Will  you  come  up  to  my  rooms ? "  he  asked. 
"  We  shan't  be  disturbed  there." 
191 


Roger  Drake 

It  was  true  that  I  had  called  on  a  matter  of 
business  ;  but  business,  our  copper  interests,  Red 
City,  all  were  far  away  from  my  thoughts  as  we 
stood  together  in  the  elevator,  and  while  I  fol- 
lowed him  to  his  parlor. 

He  was  more  changed  even  than  Fletcher 
had  intimated,  from  the  man  I  had  known  so 
well;  thinner,  and  instead  of  the  erect  carriage, 
there  was  a  decided  stoop  ;  he  was  growing  bald, 
and  wore  eyeglasses.  But  his  steady  gray  eyes 
were  just  the  same,  and  his  voice  and  somehow 
the  sight  of  him  took  me  back  to  the  old  days 
of  the  barber  shop,  and  the  long  walks  and  the 
gold  fever. 

I  had  come  to  him  with  just  such  a  business 
proposition  as  I  should  have  made  to  a  man  I 
had  never  seen  before.  I  meant  simply  to  say 
to  him  that  if  he  were  coming  to  look  after  his 
interests  personally  because  he  believed  that  any 
one  was  acting  adversely  to  them,  that  I  believed 
he  had  been  misinformed ;  that,  for  myself,  all 
I  wanted  was  that  we  all  should  act  in  harmony 
together,  and  that,  so  far  as  I  knew,  the  others 
felt  the  same  way  about  it. 

But  as  I  sat  facing  him  in  his  parlor  there, 
I  found  it  difficult  to  begin,  and  when  I  did 
begin,  it  was  not  to  say  just  what  I  had 
planned. 

192 


Roger   Drake 

"  I  told  you  it  was  a  business  matter,"  said 
I,  "  and  so  it  is,  but  I  guess  there's  a  personal 
element  about  it,  too." 

His  face  was  turned  to  the  window,  and  it 
no  longer  wore  the  look  of  surprise  I  had  first 
noted  in  it ;  but  something  was  working  there, 
something  I  couldn't  give  a  name  to,  but 
understood  from  what  was  going  on  in  my 
own  mind. 

"  When  I  parted  from  you  last,"  I  went  on, 
"  I  was  very  angry.  The  cause  for  that  anger, 
or  the  justice  of  it,  I  don't  want  to  go  into. 
But  I  made  a  threat  then,  that  if  I  ever  could 
get  an  advantage  over  you,  I  should  use  it  to 
the  last  extremity.  You  have  heard,  perhaps, 
that  I  have  succeeded  out  here,  that  commer- 
cially I  have  a  strong  position,  and  my  old  threat 
would  very  naturally  recur  to  you.  Well,  I 
made  the  threat,  and  I  have  come  to-day  to  un- 
make it.  I  do  that  so  that  in  matters  of  business 
we  may  act  toward  each  other  as  any  other  two 
business  men  might  act  whose  interests  in  some 
particulars  are  alike.  You  understand  me,  don't 
you  ?  " 

"  I  understand,"  he  answered.  "  I  believe 
what  you  say,  and  I  believe  that  you  say 
it  in  good  faith,  and  not  because  you're 
afraid." 

o  193 


Roger  Drake 

His  sentence  ended  in  the  air.  He  got  up 
abruptly  and  strode  over  to  the  window.  I 
waited  a  moment  for  him  to  go  on ;  then  I  rose 
too. 

"  I  can  say  this  much  more,"  said  I,  "  not 
as  a  matter  of  business  but  personally ;  I  no 
longer  wish  you  any  ill  —  " 

He  turned  on  me  with  a  vehemence  which 
checked  the  words  that  were  on  my  tongue. 
"It's  too  late  for  that,  Drake,"  he  said 
sharply.  "  Much  too  late,"  he  repeated  turn- 
ing away. 

"You  also  made  a  threat,"  said  I.  "  Do  you 
unsay  it  ? " 

He  didn't  answer  immediately,  but  at  last  he 
spoke,  looking  me  squarely  in  the  eyes.  "  No, 
that  stands  as  I  said  it.  It's  too  late  for  that 
too.  Do  you  understand  ? " 

"Yes,"  said  I.     "So  be  it." 

It  was  still  early  in  the  afternoon,  but  I  did 
not  go  back  to  the  office.  Instead,  as  soon  as 
my  train  could  be  made  ready,  I  set  out  for 
my  clump  of  pines  which  overlook  Father 
Jansen's  little  valley.  That  ride  beside  but 
high  above  the  quiet  river  in  the  sweet,  pun- 
gent air  used  generally  to  make  me  feel  better 
and  let  me  see  the  day  that  had  gone  by  in  a 
194 


juster  perspective.     But  the  air,  and  the  river, 
and  the  trees  didn't  avail  to-day. 

The  little  switching  engine  pushed  my  car  up 
to  the  end  of  the  track,  the  brakes  locked  it 
fast,  and  leaving  it  there,  I  walked  down  the 
path  into  the  valley.  And  at  the  foot  of  it, 
where  it  makes  the  first  turn,  I  found  Barget 
waiting  for  me. 

Ah,  Barget,  you  knew  as  you  read  these 
pages,  that  though  I  was  telling  but  half  the 
story,  still  I  was  not  forgetting.  You  knew 
while  I  was  recounting  the  plans,  the  ambitions, 
the  work,  of  those  days,  how  much,  here  untold, 
must  have  come  crowding  into  my  memory. 
And  I  think  you  knew,  in  this  account  of  those 
days  when  your  name  was  always  singing  in 
my  heart,  why  it  is  left  out  of  those  pages. 

After  we  were  betrothed,  when  you  would 
come  to  me,  do  you  remember  how  the  others 
who  might  be  there  used  to  slip  away  and  leave 
us  quite  alone  together  ?  Well,  so  it  is  as  I 
write,  and  so  it  has  come  that  I  have  kept  you 
out.  For  this  story  I  am  writing  is  not  our 
story,  yours  and  mine.  God  be  thanked,  we 
have  no  story  to  tell. 

She  met  me  at  the  turn  of  the  path.     "  It 
has  been  a  bad  day,"  she  said,  "  and  the  wor- 
ries have  followed  you  even  here." 
'95 


Roger   Drake 

But  they  fell  away  from  me  as  I  looked  into 
her  calm  face.  "It  was  a  bad  day,"  said  I, 
"  but  it's  gone  by  now." 

And  slipping  my  hand  into  hers  we  walked 
down  the  path  together. 


196 


CHAPTER  IX 

AFTER  my  talk  with  Stanley  it  would 
have  been  mere  fatuity  to  cherish  any 
hope  of  averting  the  struggle.  We  must  fight 
it  out.  The  dimensions  of  the  coming  war  I 
only  partly  foresaw,  nor  can  that  be  wondered 
at.  I  could  not  have  been  expected  to  guess 
that  it  was  to  last  as  long  as  the  siege  of  Troy, 
to  cost  more  millions  than  many  a  war  which 
has  altered  the  history  of  nations,  that  it  was  to 
sweep  from  the  Red  City  Council  Chamber  to 
the  floor  of  the  United  States  Senate,  to  de- 
bauch the  politics  of  our  young  state,  to  in- 
volve a  transcontinental  railroad,  to  shake  Wall 
Street,  accustomed  as  it  is  to  subterranean  dis- 
turbances, as  it  has  seldom  been  shaken,  and 
every  other  financial  centre  in  the  country  along 
with  it,  and,  what  I  think  worst  of  all,  to  wipe 
out  utterly,  hundreds  of  thousands  of  laborious 
savings  whose  loss  left  so  long  a  trail  of  want 
and  misery  behind  it. 

You  must  not  look  here  for  the  story  of  that 
war.    It  would  fill,  if  one  were  to  try  to  go  into 
197 


Roger   Drake 

all  its  details  and  ramifications,  a  much  larger 
book  than  this  will  be,  and  it  would  not  be 
worth  reading  when  it  was  done.  None  of  us 
who  was  engaged  in  it  could  tell  the  whole  truth 
about  it,  none  of  us  ever  knew  the  whole  of  his 
own  side  of  it,  let  alone  the  other.  The  news- 
papers have,  I  think,  done  that  task  as  well  as 
it  could  be  done,  and  certainly  as  well  as  the 
struggle  itself  deserved. 

As  in  most  wars,  commercial  or  otherwise, 
the  majority  of  the  battles  were  futile,  most  of 
the  damage  that  was  done  was  quite  beside  the 
mark,  and  had  no  effect  upon  the  outcome. 
Many  persons  and  interests  involved  them- 
selves in  it  who  had  no  concern  in  it  whatever, 
and  many  made  it  the  occasion  of  wreaking 
private  grudges  in  all  sorts  of  directions.  And 
while  it  lasted,  bribery,  perjury,  blackmail, 
speculation,  embezzlement,  and  a  legion  of 
minor  devils,  grew  and  flourished  like  the 
green  bay  tree. 

I  suppose  I  might  pretend,  and  certainly  I 
might,  if  any,  that  I  knew  from  the  beginning 
to  the  end  what  it  was  all  about,  but  I  own 
frankly  that  I  didn't.  Barget  was  reading  to 
me  in  Milton's  "  Paradise  Lost,"  the  other 
night,  and  when  she  came  to  the  description 
of  Chaos,  it  struck  me  as  about  the  justest 
198 


Roger  Drake 

account  of  the  Northwestern  Copper  War  that 
any  one  could  give.  It  ends,  you  may  re- 
member, — 

"  Rumor  next,  and  Chance, 
And  Tumult,  and  Confusion,  all  embroiled, 
And  Discord  with  a  thousand  various  mouths." 

But,  through  the  midst  of  all  that,  there  lies,  I 
believe,  a  single  chain  of  events,  some  large,  and 
some  much  too  small  to  attract  anybody's  atten- 
tion, which  led  directly  to  our  final  victory, 
and  with  that  and  that  only  I  mean  to  concern 
myself.  Taken  out  from  the  rest  of  the  tangle, 
I  believe  that  this  sequence  has  a  meaning  and 
a  moral  to  it,  which  I  shall  expound  when  the 
time  comes.  But  that  is  somewhat  ahead  of 
my  story. 

Apparently  Stanley  didn't  mean  to  strike 
until  he  got  ready,  and  there  was  a  long  in- 
terval between  his  challenge  and  our  first  skir- 
mish. During  the  interval,  except  for  keeping 
my  eyes  open  for  anything  that  might  be  going 
on,  I  concerned  myself  very  little  with  the 
prospect.  I  had  everything  in  readiness  so  far 
as  I  could  see,  and  there  were  other  pleasanter 
matters  which  absorbed  my  attention. 

To  begin  with,  Barget  and  I  were  building 
our  house,  or  rather  two  of  them.  One  was 

199 


Roger  Drake 


on  Prospect  Avenue,  in  Red  City,  along  in 
line  with  Mr.  Cooper's  and  Mr.  Halstead's 
and  the  rest  of  them.  Stanley's  house  was  in 
the  next  block.  Like  the  others,  ours  was  a 
monstrous  affair  of  granite,  very  complete,  very 
luxurious,  but  with  no  great  distinction  archi- 
tecturally. Two  descriptions  of  it  were  pub- 
lished, one  of  a  most  laudatory  nature  in  the 
Daily  News,  accompanied  by  an  editorial  upon 
the  substantial  benefit  I  had  conferred  on  the 
city  by  building  it ;  the  other,  from  a  different 
point  of  view,  in  the  Argus,  also  supplemented 
by  an  editorial  entitled,  "  How  did  he  get  it? " 

Barget  used  sometimes  to  come  to  the  city 
for  a  look  at  it,  or  a  conference  with  the  archi- 
tect, but  on  the  whole,  we  didn't  take  a  very 
profound  interest  in  it  in  those  days.  It  didn't 
seem  possible  that  the  leviathan  could  be  meant 
to  live  in.  When  we  talked  about  our  House, 
we  were  thinking  of  the  other  one. 

It  was  perched  up  at  the  head  of  Father 
Jansen's  valley,  just  above  where  Barget  and  I 
had  had  our  birthday  party,  on  the  second  of 
the  three  terraces  which  form  the  bank ;  a 
rambling,  irregular  sort  of  structure,  partly  of 
cobblestones  from  the  river  bed,  and  partly  of 
great  unhewn  logs.  If  we  were  but  lukewarm 
in  our  interest  in  the  great  house  on  Prospect 
200 


jf 

Roger  Drake 

Avenue,  we  made  up  for  it  in  our  enthusiasm 
over  this.  For  the  greater  part  of  the  day 
Barget  would  sit  on  a  log  near  by,  watching, 
suggesting,  vetoing  this  or  that  notion  of  the 
honest  mechanic  who  was  nominally  in  charge, 
and  in  the  evening  she  would  be  waiting  for 
my  train  from  Red  City  with  our  horses,  and 
we  would  gallop  back  to  the  site  to  spend  an 
hour  or  so  scheming  and  devising  for  the  mor- 
row. The  result  was  a  defiance  of  every  archi- 
tectural convention  in  the  catalogue,  but  it  was 
exactly  as  we  wanted  it.  When  it  was  done  we 
furnished  it,  with  a  similar  disregard  of  the 
customary  way  of  doing  things,  just  as  our 
fancy  directed. 

At  last,  one  June  afternoon,  I  rode  out  to  the 
valley  earlier  than  usual,  and  not  alone,  either, 
for  Fletcher  was  with  me.  He  had  reached 
Red  City  that  day,  and  when  I  met  him  at  the 
station  and  seized  his  hand,  he  dropped  the 
other  on  my  shoulder,  and  said,  "  God  bless 
you."  And  the  next  morning,  instead  of  rush- 
ing off  to  town,  we  went,  he  and  Barget  and  I, 
to  look  at  the  new  house.  The  laborers  had 
left  it  long  ago,  the  last  touch  had  been  put 
upon  it,  and  it  was  fragrant  and  alight  with 
every  kind  of  blossom  that  bloomed  in  the 
valley. 

201 


Roger   Drake 

And  after  we  had  seen  it  all,  including  his 
room,  —  for  you  may  be  sure  one  of  the  rooms 
was  his,  —  and  after  we  had  passed  the  greater 
part  of  the  day  at  Father  Jansen's,  in  the  spirit 
of  all  such  days,  which  is  merry  but  with  a 
strain  of  sadness,  when  the  shadows  were  grow- 
ing long  again,  we  all  went  back  with  a  few 
others  who  had  come  that  afternoon,  to  our 
house  under  the  cliff,  and  there  and  then  Bar- 
get  and  I  were  married.  It  was  just  past  sun- 
set when,  standing  in  our  doorway,  she  and  I 
watched  the  rest  go  down  the  path,  and  then 
around  the  curve  of  the  road  which  leads  down 
the  valley. 

We  spent  a  few  days  there  quite  alone,  then 
went  away  for  two  or  three  months  in  Europe. 
We  should  have  stayed  longer,  but  a  cable 
from  Lawrence  convinced  me  that  it  was  high 
time  that  I  should  be  back  and  in  the  harness. 
So  we  returned,  but  not  to  our  little  house 
under  the  cliff.  The  peaceful  days  must  give 
place  at  last  to  days  of  struggle.  For  a  while, 
at  least,  we  must  be  where  every  ounce  of 
strength  and  influence  we  had  must  be  brought 
to  bear.  So  we  picked  up  a  corps  of  ser- 
vants, and  opened  the  big  house  on  Prospect 
Avenue. 

The  first  thing  I  did,  on  reaching  Red  City, 


a 

Roger   Drake 

was  to  find  out  Lawrence,  and  have  a  talk  with 
him.  He  pulled  a  long  face  when  I  walked 
into  his  office,  and  somewhat  satirically  ex- 
pressed his  surprise  at  seeing  me. 

"  I  don't  believe  I'd  have  bettered  matters 
by  coming  back  sooner,"  said  I.  "  I  see  that 
there's  a  big  smelter  going  up  below  the  North- 
western, and  a  railroad  connecting  it  with  the 
CHESUS.  I  can  guess  what  that  means.  But 
it  doesn't  disturb  me  very  seriously.  He 
won't  win  at  that  game.  I  can  buy  ore  at  a 
higher  price  than  he  can  and  still  make  money. 
He  has  to  pay  for  his  power." 

"That  isn't  what  worries  me  either,"  Law- 
rence replied.  "  It's  Reech.  What  chance  do 
you  think  you  have  of  getting  control  of  the 
Red  City  and  Texas  ? " 

"If  Reech  hasn't  been  lying  to  me,  my 
chance  is  pretty  good.  I  haven't  seen  him 
yet,  but  from  his  letters  he's  been  doing  as 
well  as  possible.  And  we've  got  several 
months  yet  before  election." 

"  This  is  the  sum  and  substance  of  what  I 
know  about  it,"  Lawrence  went  on.  "  I  know 
that  Reech  is  a  rascal,  and  I  think  —  well  I 
know  —  that  there's  been  influence  brought 
to  bear  on  him  by  somebody  from  another 
quarter.  I  imagine  it's  a  question  of  dollars 
203 


Roger   Drake 

and  cents  with  him  whether  he  sells  you  out 
or  not." 

I  was  disposed  to  take  this  warning  a  good 
deal  more  seriously  than  I  had  taken  the  other 
one,  and  though  I  asked  him  laughingly  if 
his  suspicions  weren't  sometimes  roused  even 
against  himself,  yet  I  lost  no  time  in  sending 
for  Reech  and  asking  him  for  a  specific  report 
on  what  he  had  or  had  not  accomplished. 

He  was  bland  as  always,  confident  that  all 
was  going  well,  could  assure  me  that  I  needn't 
feel  the  slightest  uneasiness,  but  he  required 
constant  bringing  back  to  the  subject  at  hand, 
and  when  I  cut  short  his  hopeful  generalities 
and  asked  him  for  a  schedule  of  the  stock  he 
had  secured,  he  looked  hurt  and  said  he  had 
not  prepared  one.  I  told  him  to  submit  one 
to-morrow  without  fail,  and  ended  the  hearing 
somewhat  abruptly. 

Reech  was  no  fool.  He  could  talk  business 
as  straight  to  the  point  as  anybody  when  the 
business  would  bear  scrutiny,  and  I  knew  per- 
fectly well  before  he  went  out  that  there  was  a 
screw  loose  somewhere. 

But  it  is  a  good  maxim  in  a  widely  known 

American  game  to  show  no  more  cards  than 

the   situation    calls  for,  so  when   Reech   came 

around  next  day  I  changed  my  tactics.     Ac- 

204 


Roger   Drake 

cording  to  the  schedule  he  hadn't  got  half 
enough  stock  and  he  had  paid  amazing  prices 
for  it,  but  he  had  a  plausible  explanation  on 
his  tongue,  and  alleged  that  he  was  on  the 
point  of  acquiring  a  great  deal  more  very 
cheap,  so  I  told  him  to  go  ahead,  and  to  do 
the  best  he  could,  and  professed  myself 
satisfied. 

I  saw  clearly  enough  that  I  had  been  a  fool 
to  put  myself  so  completely  in  his  hands.  I've 
no  doubt  that  he  wouldn't  have  sold  me  out 
without  good  business  reasons  for  doing  so,  but 
he  had  a  personal  reason  also  which  must  have 
weighed  with  him.  We  had  started  out  to- 
gether, and  he  had  seen  me  succeed  where  he 
failed,  and  it  was  no  wonder  that  he  was  glad 
.to  help  pull  me  down.  All  that  was  plain 
enough  after  the  event. 

Well,  I  did  all  I  could  to  make  up  for  my 
negligence.  I  had  Lawrence  drop  everything 
else  and  take  up  the  business  in  deadly  earnest. 
I  gave  him  carte  blanche,  or  more  exactly, 
blank  checks,  and  told  him  if  possible  to  get 
me  possession  of  the  control  of  the  road,  no 
matter  what  it  might  cost,  and  if  there  had  been 
anything  left  to  get,  if  the  game  hadn't  been 
played  and  finished  already,  he  would  have  won 
for  me.  But  of  that  hereafter. 
205 


Roger   Drake 

In  the  meantime  Barget  went  into  society, 
and  I  into  politics, — rather  simple  matters  both. 
Everybody  in  town,  except  the  Stanleys,  called 
on  us,  and  afterwards  came  many  times  again 
to  receptions,  dinners,  and  now  and  then  a  ball. 
I  say  Barget  went  into  society,  because  it  was 
all  her  own  doing.  She  came  and  sat  down  on 
my  knee  one  evening  after  dinner,  when  the 
preliminary  round  of  calls  was  about  over,  and 
handed  me  a  paper.  "Will  you  please  OK 
this,  Mr.  Drake  ?  "  she  said,  and  then,  "  That's 
what  they  say,  isn't  it  ?  " 

"  Yes,"  said  I,  "  but  they  don't  as  a  rule  sit 
on  my  knee  when  they  say  it." 

The  paper  contained  a  programme  of  enter- 
tainments of  one  sort  or  another  running 
through  the  whole  season.  The  extent  of  it 
made  me  a  little  nervous. 

"  That's  the  right  idea,"  said  I.  "  This  sort 
of  thing  will  strengthen  my  position  here,  and 
it's  what  we  built  the  house  for.  But  don't 
you  think  we'd  better  begin  a  little  more 
slowly  ?  You  see  we're  really  plain  people.  I 
haven't  been  to  anything  like  this  for  so  long 
that  I'm  afraid  I  don't  know  how  to  act  —  " 

She  put  her  hand  over  my  mouth,  and  told 
me  to  wait  and  see  if  she  didn't  know  how  to  do 
it,  and  laughed  me  into  confessing  that  that  was 
206 


Roger   Drake 

what  I  had  meant.  For  revenge,  she  said,  she 
would  not  consult  me  at  all  in  preparation  for 
the  first  party ;  she  would  not  even  let  me  see 
the  gown  she  was  going  to  wear.  If  I  had  some 
misgivings  in  the  interval,  the  occasion  itself 
repaid  me  for  them,  and  when  I  had  watched 
her  for  a  while  receiving  our  guests  and  mov- 
ing about  amongst  them,  I  vowed  that  there- 
after, if  Barget  should  wish  to  undertake 
anything,  no  matter  what,  I  would  say,  "  Go 
ahead,"  and  sit  by  and  watch  with  perfect  con- 
fidence. 

Going  into  politics  was  a  simpler  matter  than 
going  into  society.  It  really  involved  very 
little  more  than  a  generous  contribution  to  a 
campaign  fund  and  a  few  small  dinners.  I 
don't  intend  in  this  memoir  to  go  into  my 
political  career  in  any  detail.  It's  pretty  well 
known  and  not  very  edifying;  I  don't  look 
back  on  it  with  any  pleasure  myself.  But  I 
want  to  say  just  a  word  in  my  own  defence.  I 
began  this  account  of  a  part  of  my  life  by  say- 
ing, among  other  things,  that  I  had  never 
trafficked  in  men's  consciences,  and  though 
that  may  have  brought  a  rather  scornful  smile 
to  the  lips  of  some  of  my  readers,  it  was  never- 
theless true.  That  is  not  pretending,  mind 
you,  that  I  didn't  sometimes  buy  what  ought 
207 


Roger   Drake 

never  to  be  for  sale.  I  shall  presently  show 
how  and  why  I  bought  Reech  back  again. 
But  I  never  paid  money  for  what  wasn't  in  the 
market,  for  anything  which,  if  not  mine  at  my 
price,  wasn't  some  other  man's  at  his.  I  don't 
try  to  defend  the  morals  —  the  abstract  morals 
—  of  my  political  position  farther  than  to  say 
that  at  the  moment  and  in  the  crisis  I  did  what 
seemed  to  be  the  only  thing  I  could  do. 

But  politics  and  society  were  only  a  small 
part  of  my  occupations  during  those  months. 
Stanley  was  building  a  smelter,  and  I  tried  to 
neutralize  that  move  by  improving  the  North- 
western, putting  in  Bessemer  converters,  which 
the  water  power  enabled  us  to  use  very  economi- 
cally, and  adding  an  electrolytic  plant  where 
we  could  use  our  own  sulphuric  acid.  Also, 
about  that  time,  I  took  the  contract  for  lighting 
the  city  by  electricity  —  the  water  power  again  ; 
it  seemed  a  hundred  years  since  I  had  bought 
that  power  of  the  miller  for  four  thousand 
dollars.  A  rival  of  the  Argus,  called  the  Dally 
Newsy  which  had  been  launched  a  little  while 
back,  was  also  a  venture  of  mine. 

All  that,  however,  was  somewhat  beside  the 

mark,  or  rather  was  merely  subsidiary  to  my 

main  purpose.    That  purpose  I  had  outlined  to 

Lawrence  months  before, — to  draw  the  gigantic 

208 


Roger  Drake 

copper  industries  in  the  Bent  River  district  into 
one  organization,  an  organization  strong  enough 
to  keep  the  peace  between  its  members,  an 
assured  neutrality  which  should  prevent  these 
individual  giants  from  falling  foul  of  one 
another.  If  that  had  been  my  purpose  when  I 
talked  to  Lawrence,  when  it  was  all  impersonal, 
hypothetical,  you  can  imagine  how  every  effort, 
every  resource,  was  strained  to  achieve  it  now, 
with  war  and  perhaps  defeat  confronting  me. 
For  it  was  here  that  the  game  would  be  lost  or 
won.  Whatever  temporary  advantage  either 
one  of  us  might  gain,  the  war  would  not  be 
ours  until  I  had  effected  that  organization,  — 
trust,  combine — call  it  what  you  like, — or  until 
Stanley  had  made  it  impossible  for  me  to  do  so. 

But  if  I  was  doubly  determined  to  bring 
about  this  result,  I  must  be  doubly  cautious  in 
my  efforts  to  do  so.  A  nation  which  is  threat- 
ened with  a  war  cannot  with  very  good  grace 
begin  to  scurry  about  after  allies,  and  I  knew  I 
could  not  expect  my  competitors  to  step  in  and 
embroil  themselves  with  Stanley  out  of  pure 
benevolence  for  me. 

At  one  time  and  another  I  talked  with  Hal- 
stead  and  with  Cooper  in  a  general  sort  of  way. 
They  took  it  differently :  Halstead  expressed 
a  good  deal  of  enthusiasm,  while  Cooper  was 
p  209 


Roger   Drake 

frankly  sceptical,  but  both  wanted  to  hear  more 
about  it.  The  result  of  our  talk  was  that  one 
January  afternoon  found  a  representative  of 
every  copper  interest  in  the  district  —  except 
the  Crcesus  —  sitting  about  in  the  leather  chairs 
in  my  private  office,  while  outside  the  snow 
whistled  against  the  windows.  They  had  come 
dropping  into  the  room  one  at  a  time,  and  we 
didn't  attempt  to  talk  business  until  all  were 
assembled,  and  as  we  hadn't  much  in  common 
besides  copper,  the  conversation  flagged  a  little. 
But  finally  the  last  man,  Halstead,  made  his 
appearance,  and  we  drew  our  chairs  up  to  the 
table. 

I  can  remember  to-day  just  how  we  sat, 
Cooper  and  Rosenblum  opposite  me,  Arm- 
strong and  his  chief  engineer,  a  young  fellow 
named  Parker,  to  the  left,  Frankenburgher, 
who  had  come  up  from  Brownsville  just  for 
the  meeting,  at  the  right,  and  on  my  right  and 
a  little  behind  me  where  I  could  not  see  his 
face,  Halstead. 

"Well,  gentlemen,"  said  I,  "I'm  afraid  I'll 
have  to  make  a  speech." 

If  you  have  read  my  memoir  thus  far,  you 
need  not  be  told  what,  in  substance,  I  said,  and 
if  you  consider  the  stake  I  was  playing  for,  you 
will  know  that  I  was  terribly  in  earnest.  I 

210 


o 

CQ 


Iff 

Roger  Drake 

realized  fully  what  it  meant,  what  a  chance  the 
presence  of  those  six  listeners  offered  me. 
There  was  wealth  enough  represented  in  that 
room  to  have  maintained  an  army,  to  have 
bought  all  the  rest  of  the  state  outright.  If 
we  could  but  agree  to  stand  together  for  peace 
and  justice,  there  could  be  no  gainsaying  our 
fiat;  not  even  Stanley,  with  all  the  resources 
of  the  Croesus  at  his  back,  could  resist  us. 

It  all  lay  with  me  now,  and  as  my  first 
embarrassment  wore  off  I  became  confident 
that  I  should  succeed.  This  much  was  in  my 
favor :  I  was  talking  honestly,  I  was  not  trying 
to  trick  them,  to  spin  any  deceitful  illusion,  but 
merely  to  make  them  see  what  was  as  clear  as 
daylight  to  me.  I  knew  then,  as  I  know  now, 
that  I  was  right. 

While  I  talked,  my  eyes  went  from  one  to 
another,  looking  for  and  sometimes  seeing  a 
nod  of  approval  or  a  glance  of  comprehension. 
They  rested  most  of  the  time  on  the  partners 
who  sat  opposite  me,  on  Cooper,  the  thin  face, 
the  long  thin  nose,  the  thin  hand  stroking  the 
thin  close-cropped  beard,  his  eye  fixed  con- 
stantly on  a  big  ink  spot  on  the  blotting  paper 
which  covered  the  table ;  and  from  him  to  his 
exact  opposite,  Rosenblum,  whose  hair  was 
grizzled  and  kinky,  whose  face  bore,  plain  to 

211 


Roger   Drake 

read,  the  marks  of  his  Jewish  ancestry,  whose 
eyes,  shrewd  but  not  unkindly,  were  all  the 
while  on  my  face.  I  noticed,  too,  how  young 
Parker  sprawled  in  his  chair,  and  now  and  then 
whispered  behind  his  hand  to  his  chief,  whose 
only  replies  were  nods  or  shakings  of  the  head, 
and  how  Frankenburgher  sat  perfectly  still, 
except  when  he  was  lighting  a  fresh  cigar  from 
the  butt  of  an  old  one,  his  hands  clasped  over 
his  stomach,  not  moving  even  to  brush  away 
the  ashes  which  flaked  and  fell  from  his  cigar 
and  settled  in  drifts  in  the  creases  across  his 
vest. 

I  don't  know  how  long  I  talked — for  half  an 
hour,  perhaps  —  before  I  made  an  end,  and 
waited  to  hear  what  they  would  say. 

"  Harmony  iss  good,"  said  Frankenburgher, 
around  his  cigar. 

"  We  seem  to  harmonize  well  enough  so  far 
as  I  can  see,"  observed  Armstrong. 

Halstead  spoke  up  quickly.  "  Ah,  but  Mr. 
Drake  is  right,  none  the  less.  It  is  true  we 
have  done  wonderfully  well  so  far.  But  our 
interests  are  expanding,  are  more  and  more  in 
the  hands  of  our  agents,  less  and  less  in  our 
direct  personal  control,  and  between  them  some 
trouble  may  spring  up.  And  also,  as  our 
interests  expand,  is  it  unlikely  that  they  may 


Roger  Drake 

overlap,  may  involve  us  in  a  litigation  or  even, 
as  Mr.  Drake  puts  it,  in  war  ? " 

Cooper  looked  up  keenly  at  me.  "  Hasn't 
Mr.  Drake  any  more  definite  intimation  than 
that  of  a  possible  break  in  the — the  harmony, 
since  that  seems  to  be  the  word,  which  we  have 
been  enjoying? " 

"  Yes,"  I  answered,  "  I  have.  I  know  that 
the  proprietor  of  the  Croesus,  Mr.  Stanley, 
intends  nothing  less  than  to  drive  me  out  of 
business  in  this  section  of  the  country."  I  hesi- 
tated a  minute  and  then  went  on.  "  I  think 
perhaps  that  needs  some  explanation.  At  one 
time  I  owned  half  of  the  Crossus  property. 
For  a  personal  reason,  which  I  shall  not  go 
into,  here  or  elsewhere,  I  sold  my  share  to  Mr. 
Stanley  for  ten  thousand  dollars.  Shortly  after 
that,  I  was  warned  not  to  attempt  to  make  an- 
other start  here ;  that  if  I  did,  I  should  be  run 
out  of  town.  When  Mr.  Stanley  took  up  his 
residence  here  some  months  ago,  he  repeated 
that  threat  expressly  and  in  person." 

"  Is  it  fair  to  ask  "  —  Cooper  was  speaking 
—  "on  what  ground  you  are  trying  to  induce 
us  to  take  your  side  in  this  affair  with  Mr. 
Stanley  ? " 

"  I  don't  ask  you  to  take  my  side,"  said  I. 
"  I  am  not  trying  to  get  an  advantage  over 
213 


Roger   Drake 

him,  nor  over  you.  I  have  no  grudge  to  work 
off  on  him.  What  I  am  anxious  for  is  an 
agreement  between  us  which  shall  be  the  best 
possible  agreement  for  every  one  of  us,  which 
shall  be  a  good  bargain  for  no  one  at  the  ex- 
pense of  some  one  else.  No  other  agreement 
has  any  validity  or  permanence.  If  Mr.  Stan- 
ley will  consent  to  be  a  party  to  it,  no  one  will 
be  more  pleased  than  I.  He  would  not  do  it 
at  my  instance,  but  in  the  face  of  a  concerted 
action  such  as  we  might  take,  I  think  he  would 
see  it  differently." 

Parker  spoke  below  his  breath,  but  quite 
audibly  to  all  of  us.  "  It  appears  that  Mr. 
Drake  is  somewhat  less  anxious  to  fight  than 
Mr.  Stanley." 

"  Ach  !  "  growled  Frankenburgher,  from  half 
way  down  his  throat. 

"  No  one  but  a  fool  is  anxious  to  fight,"  said 
Cooper,  sharply. 

"  If  I  thought  you  gentlemen  were  in  a  po- 
sition to  observe  strict  neutrality,"  said  I,  "  if 
you  weren't  sure  to  be  affected  by  such  a  strug- 
gle as  seems  likely  to  occur  between  Stanley's 
interests  and  mine,  I  shouldn't  have  brought 
this  matter  before  you  at  this  time.  This  isn't 
an  appeal  for  gratuitous  help.  I  believe  you 
will  be  affected  ;  that  half  the  force  of  my  blows 
214 


Roger   Drake 

and  Stanley's  will  fall  on  you.  You  will  watch 
the  duel,  but  you  won't  be  out  of  the  line  of 
fire." 

"  I  agree  with  you,"  said  Halstead.  "  I  am 
sure  Mr.  Drake  has  put  the  case  in  a  way  that 
appeals  to  us  all.  I  —  " 

Just  then  there  was  a  knock  at  the  door,  and 
my  chief  clerk  came  in  with  a  letter.  He  walked 
around  the  table  and  laid  it  down  at  my  right 
hand.  I  turned  to  pick  it  up,  then  saw  it  was 
for  Halstead.  I  saw  something  else,  too.  The 
address  was  typewritten,  but  below  it,  in  a  broad, 
heavy  handwriting,  and  underscored,  was  the 
word  Immediate.  I  had  not  seen  that  hand  for 
years,  but  I  had  not  forgotten  it.  It  was  just 
the  same,  just  like  the  letters  which  used  to 
come  to  me  in  the  city,  from  out  in  the  gold- 
fields  ;  and  so  vividly  did  I  remember  it,  that 
it  seemed  to  bring  the  image  of  George  Stanley 
before  my  eyes. 

Halstead  tore  it  open,  innocently  enough, 
read  two  or  three  lines,  and  then,  complaining 
that  the  light  was  failing,  he  took  it  to  the 
window. 

From  the  clew  that  one  word  had  given  me, 

I  guessed,  while  he  stood  there  reading,  what 

it  meant  and  what  was  coming.     If  I  hadn't, 

his  nervous,  altered  manner  when  he  came  back 

215 


Roger   Drake 

to  the  table  would  have  told  me,  as  it  told  the 
others.  Every  one  waited  to  hear  what  he  was 
going  to  say. 

"  I'm  afraid  —  "  he  stammered ;  "  I  think 
that  — "  But  in  a  moment  he  was  able  to 
make  better  work  of  it.  "  Mr.  Drake's  propo- 
sition has  interested  me  very  much,  and  I'm 
sure  it  has  interested  you.  But  I  think  before 
we  go  farther  with  it  that  we  should  consult 
about  it  among  —  among  ourselves ;  should 
consider  every  aspect  of  the  case.  It  is  too 
serious  a  matter  to  be  entered  into  lightly." 

He  paused  and  mopped  his  forehead.  The 
others  were  watching  him  closely.  Armstrong 
moved  uneasily  in  his  chair,  and  Cooper  smiled 
a  little. 

I  stood  up.  "  I  am  entirely  willing  to  leave 
my  case  in  your  hands,  gentlemen,"  said  I. 
"  Thank  you  for  coming  and  hearing  what  I 
had  to  say  about  it." 

Ten  minutes  later  my  office  was  empty. 
And  within  the  next  few  days  I  had  letters 
from  all  of  them.  The  one  from  Cooper  and 
Rosenblum  was  the  shortest.  It  said  merely 
that  at  present  they  did  not  think  that  any  plan 
for  consolidation  was  feasible.  And  though 
the  others  were  longer,  —  Halstead's  covered 
three  sheets,  —  their  purport  was  the  same. 
216 


Roger  Drake 

It  was  the  first  serious  setback  I  had  had 
since  the  day  —  so  long  ago  that  it  seemed  as 
though  it  had  happened  to  another  person  — 
when  I  had  sold  my  half  of  the  Croesus  to 
George  Stanley  for  ten  thousand  dollars.  I 
didn't  yet  realize  how  serious  it  was.  I  knew 
Stanley's  letter  to  Halstead  must  have  con- 
vinced him  and  the  others  that  he,  Stanley,  was 
in  control  of  the  situation,  but  that  such  was 
actually  the  case  I  wasn't  at  all  ready  to  grant. 

I  thought  that  there  was  still  some  possi- 
bility of  turning  Reech  to  account.  I  agreed 
with  Lawrence  that  some  one,  most  likely 
Stanley,  had  made  it  worth  his  while  to  fail  in 
the  commission  I  had  intrusted  to  him,  but  I 
thought  it  best  to  try  the  effect  of  a  little 
coercion,  anyway.  I  used  to  demand  a  report 
from  him  every  week,  of  just  whom  he  had 
seen,  what  prices  were  asked  for  the  stock,  and 
what  he  had  paid  for  the  little  he  might  have 
succeeded  in  buying.  I  could  see  that  my 
methods  worried  him ;  he  disliked  extremely 
to  be  explicit,  and  could  only  by  the  most 
absolute  insistence  on  my  part,  be  induced  to 
commit  himself  on  paper  to  the  details  of  his 
transactions.  He  was  an  expensive  agent  though 
he  didn't  accomplish  much ;  but  I  should  have 
kept  him  at  the  work  until  right  up  to  the  time 
217 


Roger   Drake 

for  the  shareholders'  meeting,  if  he  hadn't 
thrown  up  the  job  himself. 

I  urged  him  to  keep  on,  but  he  wouldn't 
hear  of  it.  "  The  pay's  all  right,"  he  said,  in 
answer  to  my  questions.  "  Everything's  all 
satisfactory  ;  but  the  fact  is  " —  he  was  so  plainly 
at  the  end  of  his  rope  that  I  could  hardly  help 
smiling  —  "the  fact  is,  I  hate  to  go  on  throw- 
ing away  your  money  when  it  ain't  going  to  do 
you  a  bit  of  good.  Those  farmers  won't  sell. 
They  tell  me  they  haven't  any  stock,  or  that 
they've  sold  it,  when  I  know  it  ain't  so.  But 
what  am  I  to  do  ?  They've  got  the  idea  that 
it's  a  skin,  and  there's  an  end  of  it." 

So  I  wrung  from  him  his  last,  unwilling 
memorandum,  and  let  him  go.  Lawrence 
agreed  with  him  by  that  time  that  it  was  use- 
less to  make  any  further  effort  to  control  the 
road,  but  the  reason  he  gave  was  different.  "  I 
don't  believe  there's  any  stock  at  all  among 
these  people.  Somebody  has  swept  it  up 
clean,  all  along  the  line,  some  agent  of  Stan- 
ley's, and  from  what  inquiries  I  thought  it 
safe  to  make,  I  believe  his  agent  was  Reech 
himself." 

I  was  reluctant  to  admit  that  I  was  beaten, 
but  it  was  a  clear  case.  Reech  had  brought  in 
to  me  less  than  a  quarter  of  the  stock,  but  what 
218 


if 

Roger  Drake 

Lawrence  had  secured  brought  the  total  amount 
up  to  over  a  third.  How  much  of  the  rest 
Stanley  had  I  didn't  know,  but  it  undoubtedly 
constituted  an  absolute  control  of  the  road. 
So  I  was  in  the  uncomfortable  position  of 
having  tied  up  a  lot  of  money  in  an  enterprise 
which  didn't  pay,  and  where  my  enemy,  not  I, 
was  the  only  one  who  could  profit  by  it. 

The  result  of  the  election  unfortunately 
justified  our  predictions.  I  had  been  called 
away  from  town  on  some  other  business  just 
before  it  occurred,  so  Lawrence  attended  the 
meeting  for  me  and  voted  my  proxies.  Be- 
yond the  bare  telegraphic  information  that 
we  had  been  beaten,  I  knew  nothing  of  the 
outcome  till  I  returned  to  town  a  few  days 
later,  when  I  promptly  called  on  Lawrence 
for  particulars. 

"There  isn't  much  more  to  tell,"  he  said 
lugubriously.  "They  can  do  just  what  they 
please  with  the  road.  They  elected  Stanley's 
bankers,  and  his  lawyers  and  some  of  his  per- 
sonal friends,  and —  Oh,  yes,  who  do  you 
think  ?  Who  do  you  think  the  directors  have 
made  vice-president  ? " 

"  Halstead  ?  Cooper  ?  Armstrong  ?  "  I 
guessed. 

"  No  !  "  said  Lawrence,  thumping  his  desk. 
219 


Roger   Drake 


"  Reech,  by  thunder  !  Reech  !  What  do  you 
think  of  that  ?  " 

"  I  don't  know,"  said  I,  after  staring  at  him 
for  a  minute.  "  That  wants  a  little  thinking 
over." 

The  new  management  of  the  road  didn't  leave 
us  in  doubt  very  long  as  to  what  their  inten- 
tions were.  Before  they  had  been  in  office  a 
month  they  published  a  revised  freight  tariff, 
and  hard  as  I  was  hit,  I  had  to  admire  the  skill 
with  which  they  did  it.  There  was  a  small  re- 
duction for  the  transportation  of  grain,  and  in 
general  on  the  cheaper  classes  of  necessities ; 
otherwise  it  was  much  the  same,  with  one  ex- 
ception. On  ores,  and  the  refined  products  of 
ores,  ingots,  etc.,  they  sent  the  tariff  soaring  up 
to  a  figure  at  which  even  the  Birthday,  rich  as 
it  was,  and  the  Northwestern,  economical  as 
it  was,  could  hardly  pay  a  respectable  dividend. 

And  if  we  could  hardly  make  mining  pay,  we 
who  took  out  the  richest  ore  in  the  district  and 
refined  it  in  the  cheapest  way,  do  you  ask  how 
the  other  copper  miners  fared  ?  Do  you  know 
why  they  could  still  make  money,  though  the 
freight  on  their  products  from  Red  City  to 
Bridgetown  was  as  great  as  from  there  on  to 
the  seaboard  ?  Do  you  know  why  Cooper  and 
Rosenblum,  and  Armstrong,  and  the  others 
220 


Roger   Drake 

did  not  join  eagerly  with  me  to  resist  this  out- 
rage, and  why  Halstead,  when  he  stopped  me 
on  the  street  to  commiserate  with  me  about  it, 
had,  all  the  while  he  talked,  a  half-concealed 
smile  in  his  beard  ? 

It  was  because  after  they  had  paid  the  out- 
rageous charges  of  the  Red  City  and  Texas  Rail- 
road Company,  the  company  cheerfully  paid 
them  back  again,  or  the  greater  part  of  them. 
The  transaction  is  known  as  a  rebate.  It  used 
to  make  Lawrence  boil  every  time  he  thought 
about  it.  I  didn't  like  it  a  bit  myself.  If  the 
drain  could  be  kept  up  long  enough,  it  would, 
if  not  ruin  me  outright,  at  least  force  me  to  sell 
out  again  at  my  adversaries'  price.  It  was  a 
great  inconvenience,  —  it  hurt  my  pocket-book, 
—  but  it  didn't  enrage  me  as  it  did  Lawrence. 
For  it  troubled  the  part  of  him  —  true  New 
Englander  that  he  was  —  which  was  most  sensi- 
tive ;  it  was  revolting  to  his  principles.  "  If 
these  practices  are  possible,"  he  used  to  say, 
"no  man  is  safe.  It  is  a  violation  of  the  Con- 
stitution. I  beg  you,  my  dear  sir,  to  bring  suit 
against  them." 

"  I'll  do  that  when  the  time  comes,"  I  would 
answer  him.  But  that  wasn't  the  way  the  battle 
was  to  be  won. 

Meanwhile  Stanley  was  killing  two  birds  with 

221 


Roger   Drake 

one  stone.  The  new  freight  rate  hit  me  alone, 
and  hit  hard,  but  it  served  another  purpose,  too. 
It  was  the  shrewdest  kind  of  politics.  I  had 
gone  into  one  party,  he  into  the  other,  and  his 
was  the  party  which,  according  to  its  platform, 
stood  for  the  "  Poor  against  the  Plutocrat." 
The  new  management  of  the  railroad  was,  so  the 
Argus  said,  making  the  plutocrats  squirm,  and 
so  well  were  the  cards  played,  so  bright  was  this 
benevolent,  but  immaterial, rainbow  painted,  that 
in  the  spring  elections  his  party  swept  the  state. 
It  even  got  control  of  the  Red  City  Board  of 
Aldermen,  where  I  thought  myself  impregnable, 
so  that  a  franchise  I  had  asked  for,  to  establish 
and  operate  an  electric  trolley  line  in  the  streets 
of  the  town,  was  thrown  out  without  discussion. 
When  once  the  tide  turns  in  matters  of  chance, 
of  successes,  or  failures,  it  is  wonderful  how  strong 
it  runs.  We  never  get  off  with  one  defeat. 
For  years  I  had  been  moving  along  with  an 
unbroken  record  of  successes,  and  now,  at  once, 
though  I  had  been  looking  ahead  just  as  care- 
fully, though  I  had  been  planning  my  cam- 
paign just  as  shrewdly,  I  had  been  routed, 
crumpled  up,  all  along  the  line.  I  think  if 
a  man  is  inclined  to  imagine  his  successes  all  his 
own  doing,  and  to  speak  with  a  sneer  of  the 
men  who  fail,  an  experience  like  mine  is  a  pretty 


Roger  Drake 

good  one  for  him  to  cogitate  on  a  bit,  —  to  put 
in  his  pipe  and  smoke,  as  the  saying  is. 

Throughout  the  town  my  defeat  was  regarded 
as  final.  Rumor  is  never  very  kind  to  a  man 
who  is  down,  and  stories  of  my  losses  flew  about 
the  streets,  growing  as  they  went.  Sometimes 
the  men  I  knew  spoke  to  me  about  them,  told 
me  how  they  had  denied  this,  or  asked  if  they 
should  deny  that,  but  most  of  what  I  heard  had 
been  poured  into  Barget's  unwilling  ears  at  her 
tea-table.  Society  began  to  pity  us,  and  then 
to  make  excuses,  and  then  when  the  rumors 
grew  bigger  and  blacker,  —  as  rats  leave  the 
ship,  —  they  abandoned  us. 

I  came  upon  Barget  one  evening  when  she 
didn't  know  I  was  about,  and  found  her  cry- 
ing. She  declared  at  first  that  it  was  only  the 
blues,  or  the  mopes,  or  something  of  the  sort, 
and  smiled  as  well  as  she  could.  But  I  drew 
her  down  on  the  sofa  beside  me  and  told  her 
to  tell  me  all  about  it. 

"  Oh,  it's  just  the  same  thing,"  she  said ; 
"the  same  stories  and  gossip  and  —  " 

"  I  know,"  said  I.  "  '  Such  a  pity  that  your 
husband  is  ruined,'  and  '  Where  are  you  going 
to  live  ? '  and  all  the  rest  of  it.  I  don't  wonder 
that  it  wears  you  out,  even  when  you  know 
what  folly  it  is."  And  then  I  suggested  that 
223 


Roger   Drake 

we  go  out  to  our  little  house  under  the  cliff 
until  the  tide  set  the  other  way. 

But  she  shook  her  head,  saying  that  she 
didn't  feel  a  bit  like  running  away.  "  When 
you've  beaten  them,  then  we'll  go,"  she  said. 

"  It  wasn't  that  that  made  me  cry,  anyway," 
she  added.  "  It's  other  things  they  say  about 
you."  And  then  with  a  little  sob  of  anger  in 
her  throat,  she  told  me  the  story. 

The  gist  of  Mrs.  Parker's  tale  —  she  didn't 
believe  a  word  of  it  herself,  and  had  told  Bar- 
get  out  of  pure  kindness  —  was  this :  that 
Stanley  had  picked  me  up  years  ago,  a  drunken 
reprobate,  an  utter  wreck,  working  in  a  barber 
shop,  —  Barget  had  a  smile  for  the  look  of 
Mrs.  Parker's  face  on  hearing  the  truth  of  this 
article ;  that  Stanley  had  reformed  me  and 
sent  me  East  to  get  an  education  and  had 
finally  made  me  a  partner  in  the  Croesus ;  that 
after  all  his  kindness  I  had  basely  deceived 
him,  had  treated  him  dishonorably  so  that  he 
had  been  obliged  to  cast  me  off;  and  that  I, 
in  revenge  had  attacked  him ;  and  so  forth 
through  a  long  catalogue  of  rascalities,  and 
Mrs.  Parker  had  it  all  directly  from  Mrs. 
Stanley  herself. 

Once  I  should  have  laughed  over  such 
woman's  tittle-tattle  as  that,  but  the  sight  of 
224 


Roger  Drake 

Barget's  tear-stained  face  put  another  aspect  on 
the  matter.'  I  was  thoroughly  angry  before 
she  was  through  telling  me  about  it,  and  the 
more  I  thought  upon  it,  the  angrier  I  grew. 
Up  to  now  I  had  fought  reluctantly,  because  I 
had  to.  I  had  stood  ready  to  welcome  any 
peace  on  honorable  terms,  any  compromise. 
But  now  I  was  done  with  such  half-hearted 
tactics.  The  state  wasn't  large  enough  to  hold 
us  both,  and  I  determined  that  the  fight  should 
never  stop  until  I  had  stamped  him  out,  until 
their  big  house  should  stand  empty. 

But  I  said  nothing  of  that  to  Barget.  I 
kissed  her  and  comforted  her,  and  presently 
her  tears  were  gone,  and  we  laughed  over  Mrs. 
Parker  that  night  at  dinner. 


225 


CHAPTER  X 

OF  course  it  was  folly  to  imagine  that  I  was 
at  the  end  of  my  rope ;  the  battle  of 
Bull  Run  was  the  beginning,  not  the  end,  of 
the  war.  But  Stanley  had  won  an  important 
victory,  and  you  may  believe  I  watched  anx- 
iously to  see  how  he  would  follow  it  up.  If  I 
had  been  in  his  position  and  he  in  mine,  I  am 
convinced  I  could  have  routed  him,  and  that 
conviction  made  me  feel  pretty  uncomfortable 
until  it  was  fairly  evident  to  me  that  he  didn't 
see  matters  as  I  did. 

It  seems  a  truism,  in  these  days  of  trusts  and 
combines,  to  say  that  the  thing  for  him  to  do 
was  to  make  a  perfectly  "square"  deal  with 
the  other  mine  owners,  and  so  to  convert  them 
from  neutrals  into  active  allies,  and  then  to 
weld  this  confederacy  into  a  solid  commercial 
empire ;  in  short,  to  do  just  what  I  had  been 
trying  to  do.  But  he  didn't  see  his  interests 
that  way.  He  gave  them  just  liberal  enough 
rebate  to  save  them  a  loss,  to  make  it  not 
worth  their  while  at  present  to  fight  him. 
226 


Roger   Drake 

When  I  concluded  that  this  was  the  case,  my 
own  prospects  brightened  up  considerably. 

For  the  present,  however,  I  was  still  the 
under  dog,  and  I  was  anxious  to  get  out  of 
that  situation  as  soon  as  possible.  With  that 
end  in  view,  I  set  in  motion,  at  about  the  same 
time,  an  attack  along  three  independent  lines. 
The  main  one  was  a  flank  movement;  the 
second  was  a  direct  assault,  about  whose  suc- 
cess I  was  quite  indifferent,  as  it  was  only  to 
attract  attention,  and  serve  as  a  mask  for  the 
others ;  and  the  third  was  a  shot  in  the  dark, 
an  arrow  in  the  air,  or,  as  the  street  would  say, 
a  flier. 

When  Lawrence  came  up  to  see  me  one 
afternoon,  he  found  closeted  with  me  in  my 
inner  office  a  man  of  a  class  seldom  successful 
in  running  the  gauntlet  of  the  guards  I  had  set 
upon  my  person,  or  rather  upon  my  time,  —  a 
book  agent.  Naturally  there  was  nothing  pri- 
vate about  our  conversation,  so  I  had  Lawrence 
come  in  and  get  the  benefit  of  the  story  the 
man  had  to  tell.  And  Lawrence,  looking  some- 
what astonished,  did  as  I  bade  him. 

He  was  getting  up  a  book  about  Red  City, 

and  the  vicinity,  its   history,  its    phenomenal 

progress,  vast  wealth,  picturesque  beauty,  etc., 

and  a  feature  of  it  was  to  be  short  biographies 

227 


Roger   Drake 

of  the  leading  citizens.  He  was  engaged  at 
present  not  only  in  taking  subscriptions,  but 
in  gathering  materials  for  the  work.  He  had 
called  for  and  obtained  some  of  the  facts  in  my 
career,  and  intimated  that  he  meant  to  visit 
Lawrence  in  the  course  of  a  few  days. 

"  Well,"  growled  Lawrence,  when  the  agent 
had  despatched  his  business  and  taken  his  leave, 
"  I  don't  understand  that." 

"What?"  said  I. 

"How  he  ever  got  past  Thompson"  (my 
chief  clerk),  "in  the  first  place,  and  in  the  second, 
why  you  didn't  throw  him  out  when  he  began 
his  story." 

"Oh,  he's  worth  hearing,"  said  I.  "You 
didn't  hear  all  his  story.  What  he  said  was 
true  enough  ;  he's  after  biographical  details,  but 
only  concerning  one  man.  He's  getting  to- 
gether some  interesting  facts  concerning  our 
friend  Reech." 

"  A  detective,  eh?"  said  Lawrence.  "  I  won- 
der who  wants  to  know  about  Reech." 

"I  do,"  said  I.  "I  engaged  Pendleton's 
agency  to  go  into  the  matter  for  me,  and  they 
sent  this  young  man  up  here.  He's  no  fool. 
He  did  get  past  Thompson,  and  he  got  in  here, 
and  he  kept  me  listening  to  him  for  'most  five 
minutes  before  he  told  me  what  his  business 
228 


Roger   Drake 

was.    He  did  it  for  a  sort  of  fancy  exhibition,  I 
suppose." 

"What  has  put  you  on  that  scent?"  Law- 
rence demanded.  "  Has  something  new 
turned  up  ?" 

"Nothing  new;  I've  been  doing  a  little 
thinking,  that's  all.  Some  problems  in  addi- 
tion and  subtraction.  Do  you  remember  ask- 
ing me  once  what  I  made  of  Stanley's  putting 
Reech  in  the  vice-presidency  of  the  R.  C.  &  T.  ? 
"  Now,"  I  went  on,  "  I'm  going  to  ask  you 
some  questions,  and  we'll  see  where  we  bring 
up.  To  begin  with,  did  Stanley  do  it  out  of 
pure  benevolence  ?  "  Lawrence  answered  that 
with  a  grin. 

"  In  all  probability  didn't  Stanley  know  by 
that  time  that  all  Reech  is  good  for  is  to  talk ; 
that  in  any  sort  of  executive  position  he's  use- 
less ?  And  doesn't  he  know  from  his  own  ex- 
perience that  Reech's  services  are  always  in  the 
open  market?  And  do  you  suppose  that  if 
Stanley  knew  all  that,  he  wanted  to  put  him  in 
a  responsible  position  ?  Do  you  think  he 
wanted  to  make  it  clear  to  me  that  he  had  tam- 
pered with  my  agent  ?  And  if  he  didn't  want 
to,  why  did  he  do  it,  unless  because  he  had  to  ?  " 

"All  right  so  far,"  said  Lawrence,  "but  why 
did  he  have  to  ?  " 

229 


Roger   Drake 

"  That's  what  I'm  trying  to  find  out,"said  I. 
"  This  is  my  theory.  If  you'll  look  over  that 
memorandum," — I  handed  it  to  him, — "you'll 
see  that  I  paid  over  to  Reech,  while  he  was  my 
agent,  a  thundering  pile  of  money.  I  believe 
it  was  enough  to  pay  his  expenses  and  buy  the 
stock  he  has  turned  over  to  me,  and  also  to  buy 
a  neat  little  chunk  of  that  same  stock,  not  ac- 
counted for.  Now  suppose  while  he  was  buy- 
ing up  a  lot  for  Stanley  and  a  little  for  me,  he 
was  also  buying  a  little  for  himself;  and  sup- 
pose just  before  election  he  went  to  Stanley 
with  that  stock  and  convinced  him  that  it  was 
just  enough  to  teeter  the  see-saw  the  other 
way ;  and  suppose  he  asked  for  the  vice-presi- 
dency, don't  you  suppose  he  would  have  got 
it  ?  Well,  if  I  can  convert  that  theory  into 
good  black  and  white  proof,  I  think  it  may  be 
useful.  And  that's  what  our  biographical  friend 
is  here  for.  I  don't  know  how  many  men 
they've  got  on  the  job." 

I  said  I  made  three  moves  against  the  enemy. 
This  one,  against  Reech,  was  the  flier.  I  hadn't 
very  much  hope  of  bagging  him,  but  the  chance 
was  worth  the  powder,  anyway. 

You  may  remember  that  Lawrence  had  been 
urging  me  to  bring  suit  against  the  railroad 
company  for  giving  rebates  to  my  competitors. 
230 


Roger   Drake 

I  decided  at  last  to  take  the  matter  up,  and  he 
and  Button,  another  of  the  ablest  lawyers  in 
town,  met  one  day  in  my  office  for  the  purpose 
of  going  over  the  matter. 

There  was  a  clause  in  our  State  constitution 
which  might  be  construed  liberally  to  cover  just 
such  a  case  as  that,  and  both  lawyers  were  in 
favor  of  beginning  a  suit  under  it  immediately. 
I  was,  too,  at  first,  but  presently  I  thought  of 
something  better,  which  was  to  introduce  into 
the  legislature  a  bill  directed  specifically  against 
rebates.  When  it  became  a  law,  we  could  bring 
action  under  it. 

"  I'm  afraid  you're  forgetting  what  party  is 
in  the  majority  in  the  legislature,"  said  Dutton. 

"  On  the  contrary,"  said  I,  "  that's  just  what 
I  have  in  mind.  I  mean  to  take  advantage  of 
some  of  the  free-competition,  anti-monopoly 
talk  which  that  same  majority  has  been  indulg- 
ing in  lately.  They  can  pass  such  a  bill  or  they 
can  defeat  it,  but  they  play  into  our  hands  either 
way." 

The  others  saw  the  point  at  once,  and  we 
made  a  rough  draft  of  the  bill  then  and  there. 
I  sent  for  the  minority  leader  of  the  lower  house 
and  showed  the  measure  to  him.  He  grinned 
when  he  saw  it.  "  It's  a  dynamite  cartridge, 
sure  enough,  Mr.  Drake,"  he  said.  "It  shall 
231 


Roger   Drake 

be  discharged  beneath  the  ranks  of  the  enemy 
without  delay." 

He  kept  his  word,  and  the  confusion  into 
which  he  threw  Stanley's  "  unbroken  phalanx 
standing  undaunted,  undismayed,  for  liberty, 
justice,  and  free  competition  "  was  worthy  of 
note.  That  was  only  one  of  many  stirring 
phrases  which  my  friend  the  minority  leader 
quoted  from  the  Argus  and  from  political 
speeches  made  by  members  of  the  majority  up 
and  down  the  State  ;  and  he  closed,  with  sub- 
lime impudence,  by  asking  unanimous  consent 
to  advance  the  bill  to  its  third  reading  and  pass 
it  directly. 

They  ought  to  have  done  it,  and  have  found 
some  way  around  the  difficulty  at  a  less  dra- 
matic moment,  but  instead  they  blundered  and 
opposed,  and  showed  altogether  about  as  much 
tactical  skill  in  the  crisis  as  a  flock  of  sheep. 
But  all  the  confusion  could  not  long  befog  the 
issue.  They  had  opposed  —  this  high-minded 
majority  —  a  measure  so  clearly  in  line  with 
their  avowed  policy  that  even  the  most  silver- 
tongued  of  the  leaders  could  find  no  plausible 
excuse  for  such  action.  The  Daily  News  took 
the  matter  up  with  a  good  deal  of  warmth,  and 
a  scathing  pamphlet  was  scattered  broadcast 
over  the  State,  and  in  the  end  the  "  phalanx  " 
232 


Roger   Drake 

put  the  finishing  touch  to  the  sorry  spectacle 
they  presented  by  bowing  to  the  storm  and 
allowing  the  bill  to  become  a  law.  A  couple 
of  months  later  I  brought  suit  against  the  rail- 
road. 

Such  was  my  direct  attack  upon  Stanley.  It 
was  of  advantage  to  me  in  two  ways  :  it  im- 
proved my  situation  politically,  for  the  rout  of 
the  phalanx  we  did  not  soon  permit  to  be  for- 
gotten, and  it  served  to  attract  attention,  and 
attention  attracted  to  one  quarter  is  diverted 
from  another.  But  beyond  that  I  didn't  look 
for  any  substantial  benefit  from  the  statute  I 
had  brought  into  being.  It  was  of  a  sort  to  be 
classed  among  the  ornamental  laws  of  a  com- 
monwealth. It  looked  well,  but  it  could  not 
prevent  the  giving  of  rebates  ;  could  only  make 
the  manner  of  giving  them  more  troublesome 
and  more  circuitous. 

So  you  see  that  for  all  the  immediate  good 
my  chance  shot  at  Reech  or  my  legislative  vic- 
tory did  for  me,  I  was  still  in  the  unpleasant 
and  unprofitable  position  where  Stanley's  cap- 
ture of  the  railroad  had  placed  me.  The  ap- 
palling freight  I  had  to  pay  was  turning  my 
profits  into  losses,  would  in  time  drain  me  dry, 
and  I  must  hit  upon  some  device  which  would 
be  prompt  as  well  as  effective. 
233 


Roger  Drake 

What  naturally  would  occur  first  to  every- 
body, what  first  occurred  to  me,  was  the  notion 
of  building  a  parallel  railroad  all  the  way  from 
Red  City  down  to  Bridgetown  on  the  other  side 
of  the  river  from  the  Red  City  and  Texas,  and 
fighting  the  battle  out  in  the  good  old-fashioned 
way.  But  the  more  I  thought  of  that,  the  less  I 
liked  it.  Such  a  road  would  cost  a  lot  to  build, 
there  was  no  possibility  that  it  could  pay,  and, 
last  and  worst,  a  move  like  that  could  never  win 
the  game ;  the  best  it  could  do  would  be  to 
make  a  draw  of  it.  So  I  discarded  the  idea  of 
a  parallel  railroad,  and  cast  about  for  something 
better. 

I  was  a  good  while  finding  it.  Night  after 
night,  when  Barget  had  gone  to  bed,  I  would 
go  down  to  my  study,  sweep  my  desk  clear, 
and  sit  for  hour  after  hour  staring  at  its  bare 
top  and  trying  to  think  of  a  way  to  turn  Stan- 
ley's flank.  Schemes  suggested  themselves  to 
me,  and  then  some  fatal  fault  would  appear,  to 
destroy  them.  Once  I  got  out  a  large  map  of 
the  State  and  spreading  it  upon  the  desk,  spent 
half  the  night  studying  over  it.  There  was  too 
much  on  it  for  my  purpose,  so  after  that  I  used 
to  make  rough  little  maps,  putting  in  the  towns 
and  rivers  and  railroads  as  it  would  occur  to 
me  that  they  might  have  some  bearing  on  the 
234 


* 

Roger   Drake 

situation ;  tearing  up  the  map  when  I  found  it 
came  to  nothing,  and  beginning  straightway 
with  a  fresh  one. 

I  tried  to  keep  all  this  as  well  as  I  could 
from  Barget.  She  knew  just  what  the  situation 
was,  but  I  didn't  want  her  to  see  how  seriously 
it  worried  me.  And  Barget  saw  that  too,  saw 
how  anxious  I  was  to  keep  my  trouble  away 
from  her,  so  she  used  to  go  to  bed  early,  and 
pretend  not  to  know  what  it  was  that  kept  me 
so  late  bent  over  my  desk  downstairs.  But 
one  night  long  after  I  thought  she  was  sound 
asleep,  she  came,  in  her  nightdress,  into  the 
room  where  I  was  working.  Nothing  was  the 
matter,  she  said  in  answer  to  my  question,  then 
coming  round  behind  my  chair  she  kissed  my 
forehead  and  ran  her  hands  through  my  hair. 
"  How  many  thousand  worries  there  must  have 
been  to  turn  it  so  white.  I  think  it  has  been 
growing  whiter  just  in  these  last  weeks." 

"  Not  so  bad  as  that,"  said  I.  "  We'll  solve 
this  riddle  somehow.  It  takes  a  little  thinking 
over,  that's  all." 

She  looked  at  my  map  awhile.  "  I  wish  I 
could  help,"  she  said  simply,  Then  she 
curled  up  in  a  big  leather  chair  near  by  and 
drew  a  steamer  rug  over  her.  I  pored  over 
my  map  a  little  longer,  then  threw  down 
235 


Roger   Drake 

my  pencil,  and  looking  up  found  her  eyes 
on  me. 

"  You  aren't  worried  about  it  partly  because 
you  think  I'm  worried,  are  you  ? "  she  asked. 
"  Because  I'm  not.  I'm  sure  it  will  come  out 
all  right." 

"  In  the  end,  yes,"  said  I.  "  But  it's  hard 
for  you  while  it  lasts." 

"  I'm  glad  it  is,"  she  said  quickly.  "  I'm 
glad  I  can  bear  part  of  it." 

I  knew  she  spoke  no  exaggeration,  but  the 
sober,  literal  truth,  but  the  knowledge  didn't 
make  it  easier  for  me  to  watch  her  bearing  it. 
The  loneliness,  the  spiteful  bits  of  scandal,  the 
little  slights,  hard  enough  for  a  man  to  bear 
though  he  may  profess  a  hearty  contempt  for 
them,  are  torture  to  a  woman,  and  all  these 
things  were  inflicted  upon  Barget.  She  didn't 
say  much  about  them,  but  I  knew  what  they 
were,  and  when  I  thought  about  the  cause  of 
it  all  I  felt  my  old,  slow-burning,  deep-seated 
anger  against  the  Stanleys  come  up  to  white 
heat  again.  What  the  cause  was  we  knew 
altogether  too  well ;  some  new  version  of  the 
story  came  to  Barget's  ears  every  few  days. 
Adele  Stanley  had  given  her  acquaintances  to 
understand  in  those  days  when  my  defeat 
seemed  only  a  matter  of  months,  that  any 
236 


Roger   Drake 


attention  paid  to  my  wife  would  be  construed 
as  a  direct  affront  to  herself;  that  if  people 
wished  to  invite  Mrs.  Drake  to  their  parties 
they  must  expect  to  be  dropped  from  Mrs. 
Stanley's  invitation  list.  Of  course  some  few 
of  the  old  friends  stood  by  through  foul  as  well 
as  fair,  but  most  of  them,  of  the  pleasant  people 
whom  Barget  had  liked,  found  it  easier  to  be- 
lieve, or  half  believe,  the  nasty  stories  about 
me  that  Adele  had  put  in  currency,  to  adopt 
her  tone  of  contempt  and  mock  pity  for  Barget, 
and  to  accept  the  situation  as  it  stood.  So  for 
a  while  the  carriages  would  rumble  past  our 
house  on  Prospect  Avenue  to  the  party  at  Mrs. 
Parker's  or  Mrs.  Smith's,  and  Barget,  who  had 
grown  up  where  such  gayeties  were  impossible, 
and  who  had  entered  into  them  after  our  mar- 
riage with  all  the  delight  a  girl  of  eighteen  feels 
in  such  things,  stayed  at  home  and  pretended 
to  me  that  she  didn't  care. 

I  thought  of  all  that  as  I  sat  and  looked  at 
her,  curled  up  in  the  big  chair,  and  when  I  saw 
the  tears  spring  into  her  eyes,  though  she 
turned  her  face  away  to  hide  them,  I  knew  she 
was  thinking  of  it  too.  But  there  was  a  re- 
frain running  through  and  accompanying  my 
thoughts  which  I  knew  was  not  in  hers ;  that 
they  should  pay,  should  pay  with  usury,  in  the 
237 


Roger   Drake 

coin  of  pain  and  helpless  anger  and  humiliation, 
for  every  slight  they  put  upon  her. 

We  sat  for  a  while  without  speaking;  she 
smiled  at  me  and  held  out  her  hands. 

"Yes,"  said  I.  "We'll  quit  for  to-night. 
I've  stared  at  this  map  till  it  doesn't  mean 
anything  to  me  —  " 

As  I  spoke  my  eye  fell  on  it  again.  Now, 
as  I  said,  I  had  been  poring  over  that  map  — 
or  one  just  like  it  —  for  weeks.  I  had  studied 
the  position  of  every  town,  every  river,  every 
water  power,  every  railroad,  in  the  hope  that 
the  relation  of  something  to  something  else 
would  give  me  the  clew  I  wanted.  I  had  in- 
dicated on  the  map  the  little  railroad  from 
Brutus  down  to  Marion,  where  the  coal  fields 
were  ;  I  had  even  written  "  Coal "  in  parenthesis 
under  the  word  "  Marion,"  but  it  wasn't  till  this 
very  moment,  as  I  was  saying  to  Barget  that  it 
meant  nothing,  that  I  saw  what  it  really  did 
mean. 

My  sentence  broke  off  short,  and  for  one 
blank  instant  I  stared  at  that  dot  on  the  paper, 
labelled  "  Marion  "  ;  then  I  slapped  my  hand 
down  on  the  last  of  my  maps  and  cried  out  that 
I  had  got  it. 

I  have  had  several  experiences  just  like  that, 
but  they  never  fail  to  mystify  me.  At  one  in- 
238 


Roger   Drake 

stant  everything  blank,  and  the  next  everything 
clear  in  its  minutest  details ;  just  as  things  are 
revealed  on  the  darkest  night  by  a  flash  of  light- 
ning. I  lay  awake  for  the  greater  part  of  what 
remained  of  the  night,  going  over  this  revela- 
tion, —  for  that  is  what  the  scheme  was,  —  test- 
ing its  feasibility,  planning  the  steps  necessary 
for  putting  it  into  execution;  but 'in  all  those 
hours  of  thought  I  really  added  nothing  to 
the  conception  of  it  which  had  come  to  me 
while  I  was  talking  to  Barget  about  something 
else. 

I'm  afraid  I'll  have  to  go  into  another  ex- 
planation, together  with  a  little  history,  also, 
to  make  my  scheme  clear.  I'll  be  as  brief 
about  it  as  I  can. 

Just  about  the  time  the  first  of  the  sensational 
copper  strikes  were  made  up  in  the  Red  City 
district,  a  man  named  Henry  Peters  appeared 
where  the  town  of  Marion  is  now,  and  began 
prospecting.  He  was  totally  different,  I  am 
sure,  from  any  other  prospector  that  ever  lived, 
—  mum,  cold,  and  bloodless  as  a  codfish,  which 
he  resembled  closely.  But  this  didn't  prevent 
his  being  successful.  He  found  coal,  to  be 
sure,  instead  of  copper,  but  it  paid  him  just 
as  well.  He  settled  down  with  his  family, 
opened  up  the  mines,  and  built  a  little  railroad 
239 


Roger   Drake 

over  to  Brutus,  thirty  miles  due  west,  a  town 
on  the  line  of  the  Red  City  and  Texas  Rail- 
road, and  about  halfway  between  its  terminal 
points. 

Henry  Peters  had  associated  with  him  from 
the  first  his  wife's  younger  brother,  a  man 
named  Smith.  They  worked  along  together 
very  successfully  for  a  while,  but  after  a  year 
or  two  a  violent  quarrel  broke  out  between 
them,  —  I  believe  because  Smith  insisted  on 
marrying  a  Seventh-day  Adventist.  Whatever 
the  merits  of  the  row  were,  the  partnership 
was  dissolved,  and  a  line  drawn  due  east  and 
west,  as  justly  as  might  be,  across  the  coal 
fields  :  north  of  that  line  all  belonged  to  Peters, 
south  it  was  Smith's. 

They  promptly  cut  prices  to  away  below  the 
low-water  mark  for  profits,  and  hammered  away 
at  each  other,  while  their  customers  reaped  all 
the  benefit  there  was.  Smith,  however,  soon 
tired  of  the  game,  and  sold  out  his  properties 
to  the  Northern  Railroad.  They  built  a  branch 
line  from  Marion  southwest  to  Bridgetown,  their 
nearest  point,  and  for  a  time  between  Peters 
and  his  transcontinental  competitor  there  was 
peace,  or  something  that  looked  like  it.  By 
and  by  the  railroad  decided  that  it  wanted 
Peters's  coal  lands  also,  and  they  went  about 
240 


Roger   Drake 

it  as  though  they  had  an  ordinary  man  instead 
of  an  inexorable  old  image  like  Peters  to  deal 
with.  Their  offer  was  not  high,  and  it  was  per- 
emptory ;  they  followed  it  up  with  a  sharp  cut 
in  the  price  of  coal.  That  put  an  end  to  their 
chances  of  ever  buying  the  North  Marion 
mines,  from  Peters,  anyway.  They  sold  coal 
at  a  loss,  and  he  steadily  met  their  prices,  and 
when  my  scheme  occurred  to  me,  still  the  situ- 
ation was  unchanged.  People  in  the  Bent  River 
district,  from  Red  City  to  Bridgetown,  took 
cheap  coal  as  a  matter  of  course,  while  the 
Red  City  and  Texas  Railroad  profited  greatly 
thereby,  saving  on  what  they  used  themselves, 
and  making  on  what  others  used,  for  the  retail 
coal  business  all  along  the  line  was  in  their 
hands. 

My  scheme  wasn't  altogether  simple,  but  I 
was  confident  of  carrying  it  through,  and  I 
wanted  to  waste  no  time  about  it.  So  very 
early  the  next  morning  I  packed  my  bag,  kissed 
Barget  good-by,  —  for  I  didn't  know  how  long, 
—  and  took  the  seven  o'clock  train  down  the 
line  for  Brutus  and  Marion. 

I  arrived  in  the  middle  of  the  afternoon  and 

went  around  to  Mr.  Peters's  office  only  to  find 

that  he  had  left  town  the  day  before.     They 

didn't  want  to  tell  me  where  he  had  gone,  or 

R  241 


Roger   Drake 

when  he  would  be  back,  and  it  took  some  beat- 
ing about  the  bush  to  get  it  out  of  his  clerk 
that  he  had  gone  East,  to  Saratoga  Springs, 
with  his  wife  and  daughter. 

When  I  learned  that,  I  wrote  a  note  to  Bar- 
get,  crossed  the  "  dead  line"  into  South  Marion, 
and  took  a  coal  train  on  the  Northern  down  to 
Bridgetown,  where  I  caught  the  midnight  train 
East.  The  next  day  but  one  after  the  arrival 
of  Henry  Peters  in  Saratoga,  I  walked  in  upon 
him  in  the  reading  room  of  one  of  the  big 
hotels. 

He  greeted  me  with  a  sour  smile  and  a 
clammy  hand,  and  asked  me  what  I  wanted  of 
him. 

"  I  want  to  buy  your  coal  land  and  mines  in 
Marion,  if  you  will  sell  them  to  me,"  said  I. 

He  looked  at  me  suspiciously,  sniffed,  and 
turned  back  to  his  newspaper.  "  I  do  not  wish 
to  sell  them,"  he  said. 

I  had  met  Peters  before,  though  never  in  a 
business  way,  and  I  was  not  disconcerted. 
None  of  the  decencies  of  conversation  had  any 
place  in  his  vocabulary. 

"  Will  you  please  give  me  your  attention  ?  " 
I  demanded,  and  in  some  surprise  he  put  down 
his  paper.  "  I  don't  believe  you  were  entirely 
frank  in  saying  that,"  I  went  on.  "If  you 

242 


"HE   LOOKED   AT   ME   SUSPICIOUSLY. 


Roger  Drake 

could  make  a  good  bargain,  wouldn't  you  be 
glad  to  sell  ?  " 

His  only  reply  was  another  question.  "  Are 
you  acting  as  agent  for  the  Northern  Rail- 
road?" 

"  No,  I  am  not,"  said  I. 

"  Are  you  not  trying  to  buy  with  the  idea  of 
selling  to  them  afterwards  ?  " 

Again  I  answered  in  the  negative. 

"  I  think,"  he  said,  "  that  that  is  what  you 
would  do  the  moment  you  had  succeeded  in 
buying  it.  I  do  not  wish  my  property  to  fall 
into  their  hands,  and  therefore  I  repeat,  I  do 
not  wish  to  sell  to  you." 

I  sat  still  and  thought  a  moment.  Then  I 
said.  "  If  I  were  able  to  convince  you  that  you 
are  mistaken  as  to  my  intentions,  would  you 
sell  ? " 

"  Yes,"  he  said. 

"  At  what  figure  ?  " 

He  named  it. 

"Well,"  said  I.  "I  don't  at  this  moment 
see  how  I  can  convince  you,  but  perhaps  I  can 
think  of  something.  I'll  go  out  and  tramp 
around  for  a  while  and  maybe  a  way  will  occur 
to  me.  Shall  I  find  you  here  in  an  hour?" 
He  nodded  and  picked  up  his  paper. 

When  I  try  to  do  anything  of  that  sort  I 
243 


Roger   Drake 

always  go  at  it  by  putting  myself  as  nearly  as 
possible  in  the  other  fellow's  place,  and  seeing 
his  interests  as  though  they  were  mine.  It 
makes  quite  a  difference  in  the  way  things  look. 
Well,  for  an  hour  I  tried  to  make  my  mind 
work  as  though  it  belonged  to  Henry  Peters, 
and  by  the  end  of  that  time  I  had  a  scheme 
which  suited  him.  It  was  just  this :  I  would 
pay  him  the  sum  he  asked  for  his  coal  property, 
and  at  the  same  time  would  put  up  with  some 
banker  we  should  agree  upon  a  similiar  amount 
in  shares  in  the  Northwestern  and  the  Birth- 
day, to  be  forfeited  to  said  Henry  Peters  in  case 
I  should  sell  his  coal  beds  to  the  Northern 
Railroad ;  so  that  in  order  to  sell  them  to  any 
advantage  I  should  have  to  get  more  than 
double  the  price  I  paid  him  for  them. 

The  old  man  was  quite  delighted  with  the 
bargain  when  I  appeared  punctually  on  the 
hour  and  proposed  it  to  him.  He  made  me 
spend  the  rest  of  the  day  with  him  hearing  his 
account  of  the  rapacity  of  the  railroad,  and 
toward  the  end  he  was  so  confidential  as  to 
touch  darkly  upon  the  apostasy  of  his  brother- 
in-law,  Smith. 

But  I  cut  that  as  short  as  I  could,  arranged 
the  terms  of  payment  with  him,  gave  him  a 
check  to  bind  the  bargain,  and  set  out  on  the 
2  44 


Roger   Drake 

night  train  for  New  York.  The  man  I  wanted 
to  see  there  was  the  chairman  of  the  board  of 
directors,  the  real  power  behind  the  throne,  of 
the  Northern  Railroad.  In  the  East,  and 
especially  in  that  city,  the  big  fellows  are  just 
about  as  easy  to  get  audience  with  as  the  Czar 
of  Russia ;  I  think  they're  right  about  it,  too, 
though  on  that  occasion  the  red  tape  embar- 
rassed me  somewhat.  My  name,  it  seemed, 
was  not  in  general  circulation  out  there,  and  it 
took  me  some  time  to  find  out  whether  Mr. 
Drayton  was  three  rooms  off  or  a  thousand 
miles  away.  But  at  last  I  got  at  the  chief 
clerk,  who  knew  who  I  was,  and  learned  from 
him  that  my  man  was  up  in  the  North  Woods 
fishing.  The  clerk  would  either  send  a  message 
to  him  for  me,  or  would  let  me  know  as  soon  as 
he  returned  and  arrange  for  me  to  meet  him. 
He  would  probably  be  back  within  a  fortnight. 

I  decided  to  wait,  for  I  wanted  him  in  a 
good  humor,  and  an  interruption  of  his  holi- 
day would  not  have  been  an  auspicious  begin- 
ning for  the  business  I  was  to  take  up  with 
him.  Making  every  allowance  for  exaggera- 
tion on  the  part  of  Henry  Peters,  I  could  still 
be  sure  that  my  game  would  be  a  difficult  one 
to  play. 

After  waiting  for  ten  days,  —  and  they  passed 
245 


Roger   Drake 

pretty  slowly,  too,  —  I  got  word  that  he  was  in 
town  and  would  be  glad  to  see  me ;  so  at  the 
appointed  hour  I  was  ushered  into  his  office. 
He  was  very  pleasant  and  chatted  about  vari- 
ous matters  as  though  there  were  no  such  thing 
as  being  in  a  hurry ;  but  when,  getting  around 
to  business,  I  told  him  that  I  had  bought  the 
North  Marion  coal  mines  and  wanted  to  make 
peace  with  the  railroad,  he  stiffened  up  directly. 

"  I  hope  we  may  induce  you  to  sell  us  that 
property,  Mr.  Drake,"  he  said. 

"  I'd  be  glad  to  sell  if  I  could,"  said  I,  "  but 
I'm  not  in  a  position  to.  So,  instead  of  that, 
I'm  anxious  to  come  to  an  agreement  which 
shall  be  advantageous  to  both  of  us." 

He  shook  his  head.  "  Our  ultimatum  in 
that  matter  went  out  long  ago.  The  only 
terms  we  can  agree  to  are  an  absolute  sale." 

It  looked  a  little  -like  a  deadlock.  "  Have 
you  time,  Mr.  Dray  ton,  to  listen  to  a  long 
story  ?  "  I  asked. 

He  smiled.  "  If  the  ending  of  the  story 
will  be  any  nearer  the  sale  of  the  North 
Marion  coal  fields  —  yes,"  he  said.  "If  not, 
we'd  both  be  wasting  our  time.  Agreements 
to  maintain  prices  are  rubbish." 

"  That's  not  the  sort  of  agreement  I  mean," 
said  I,  quickly.  "  They're  invariably  broken 
246 


Roger   Drake 

at  the  convenience  of  both  parties.  But  if  I 
pay  you  fifty  per  cent  of  the  net  earnings  of 
North  Marion,  and  you  pay  me  fifty  per  cent 
of  South  Marion's,  I  don't  think  either  of  us 
would  be  fool  enough  to  cut  the  price.  In 
everything  except  technical  fact  we'd  be  one 
concern.  Or  make  it  forty-five  per  cent. 
Then  we'd  each  get  paid  ten  per  cent  for 
selling;  that's  fairer.  But  that's  not  the  ques- 
tion. Will  you  listen  to  the  story  ?  " 

He  hesitated,  looking  at  his  watch  for  a 
moment,  then  told  me  to  go  ahead. 

Just  as  briefly  as  I  could,  and  perfectly 
frankly,  I  told  him  the  situation  in  Red  City, 
the  relative  positions  of  Stanley  and  the  other 
four  and  myself,  and  he  followed  me  closely. 
When  I  was  through  I  summed  up  like  this  : 

"  My  scheme  is  to  advance  the  price  of 
coal,  not  only  to  a  normal  price,  but  beyond 
that,  as  much  higher  as  may  be  necessary. 
That  will  benefit  you  in  two  ways.  You  make 
money  on  the  coal.  And  you  improve  your 
chance  of  being  able  to  absorb  the  Red  City 
and  Texas  Railroad.  I  know,  as  every  one  does, 
that  you've  been  trying  to  get  that  in  years 
past,  and  I've  been  told  you've  tried  since 
Stanley  has  had  control  of  it.  I  don't  know 
whether  that's  true  or  not." 
247 


Roger   Drake 

"  It's  true,"  he  said.  "  But  how  does  a  rise 
in  coal  improve  our  chance  ?  " 

"  Obviously  it  decreases  the  profits  and 
makes  the  owners  of  it  less  anxious  to  keep 
it." 

"  Obviously,"  he  repeated,  "  but  that  wasn't 
what  you  meant." 

"  No,"  said  I.  "  I  think  it  improves  my 
own  chances  of  getting  control  of  it  —  " 

"  Go  a  little  slower,  if  you  please,"  said  he, 
"  and  tell  me  just  what  you  mean." 

"Just  this.  This  is  why  I  bought  the  prop- 
erty of  Peters,  why  I've  come  to  you.  I  mean 
in  the  first  place  to  make  Stanley  pay  back  for 
coal  what  he  makes  me  pay  him  in  exorbitant 
freight  charges.  That  enables  me  to  play  a 
waiting  game.  And  in  the  second  place,  I 
mean  to  put  the  screws  on  him  so  hard  in  this 
matter  of  coal  that  he'll  begin  to  be  less  gen- 
erous in  the  matter  of  rebates  to  the  others. 
They'll  be  losing  money,  too,  on  their  coal 
bills,  and  as  time  goes  they'll  feel  less  satisfied 
with  their  bargain.  They  know  that  if  they'll 
stand  with  me,  that  I'll  play  fair  with  them,  and 
I  think  they'll  come  around  to  my  side  and 
combine  with  me  against  Stanley.  That  may 
seem  pretty  remote,  but  I  believe  it's  what 
would  happen." 

248 


Roger   Drake 

"  Sometimes  a  little  adversity  shakes  men 
apart,"  said  Drayton,  thoughtfully,  "  but  some- 
times it  binds  them  together.  Why  won't 
Stanley  be  just  as  likely  to  try  to  unite  them 
into  one  body  just  as  you  wanted  to  ?  " 

"  He  would  if  he  knew  enough,"  said  I, 
"  but  that's  just  what  he  doesn't  see.  He 
drives  a  hard  bargain  with  his  friends  just  as 
much  as  with  his  enemies.  In  this  last  deal 
with  them,  when  there  was  plenty  to  go  around, 
he  only  gave  them  the  leavings.  I  don't  think 
he'll  be  any  more  generous  when  there's  less." 

"  That's  just  your  impression  of  him,"  said 
Drayton. 

"  I  know  the  man,"  said  I.  "  I  think  I'm 
right." 

"  But  about  our  chance  for  absorbing  the 
Red  City  and  Texas  ?  "  questioned  Drayton. 

"  This  is  as  well  as  I  can  put  it,"  said  I. 
"  Stanley  says,  'f  Every  man  get  all  he  can ' ;  I 
say,  c  Put  it  all  together,  and  make  a  fair  divvy, 
and  you'll  all  get  more  than  you  would  the 
other  way.'  As  long  as  he  controls  the  road, 
it  won't  be  a  part  of  your  system.  He  wouldn't 
dare  let  it  out  of  his  hands.  But  if  all  of  us 
up  there  were  under  one  roof,  as  it  were,  we'd 
be  so  strong  we  shouldn't  be  afraid  of  you.  I 
should  be  in  favor  of  talking  business  with  you." 
249 


Roger  Drake 

He  said  at  last  that  he'd  think  it  over,  and 
the  next  day  I  got  a  note  from  him  saying  that 
I'd  brought  him  around,  and  that  he'd  try  to 
put  the  deal  through  at  the  next  directors'  meet- 
ing. I  should  have  been  satisfied  to  let  the 
matter  rest  there,  I  was  so  confident  that  his 
influence  in  the  management  of  the  road  was 
paramount,  but  he  kept  me  over  from  one  day 
to  another,  to  meet  this  director,  or  to  develop 
my  views  to  that  one,  so  that  my  absence  from 
home  amounted  to  something  more  than  a 
month. 

That  is  the  story  of  the  three  moves  I  made 
in  the  great  game  Stanley  and  I  were  playing. 
The  chance  shot  at  Reech,  the  result  of  which 
I  had  yet  to  learn  ;  the  direct  assault,  which  was 
already  being  fought  out  in  the  courts  and  con- 
tinued to  rage  for  long  thereafter;  and  the  pinch 
in  coal  under  which  as  it  grew  tighter,  my  ad- 
versary soon  showed  signs  of  discomfort.  And 
now  that  the  wheels  were  all  in  motion  I  was 
ready  to  sit  comfortably  by  for  a  while  and 
await  developments. 

During  the  last  weeks  of  my  absence  in  the 
East,  Barget's  letters  had  been  telling  me, 
though  not  in  so  many  words,  that  she  was 
anxious  to  have  me  come  back,  and  if  you  add 
that  to  my  own  inclination,  you  may  imagine 
250 


Roger   Drake 

that  I  was  right  glad  to  get  my  deal  closed 
up,  and  put  down  in  black  and  white,  and  to 
climb  into  the  train  which  was  about  starting 
on  the  long  pull  toward  home. 

I  need  not  say  that  my  house  door  swung 
wide  open  as  my  carriage  drove  up  to  the  steps, 
or  that  I  found  Barget  waiting  just  within  to  wel- 
come me.  But  by  the  time  we  had  sat  down 
to  dinner  I  noticed  an  unaccountable  difference 
in  her  manner  from  what  I  knew  so  well ;  there 
was  gladness  in  her  voice,  but  her  eyes  were 
serious  and  far  away.  When  I  asked  about  it, 
she  laughed  away  my  question. 

After  dinner,  when  we  could  be  quite  by 
ourselves,  we  went  into  my  study,  and  sat  down 
together  in  the  biggest  chair,  to  talk  things 
over.  After  a  while,  "  Don't  you  think,"  I 
asked  her,  "  that  now  that  we  know  we're  on 
even  terms  again  and  the  battle  is  swinging  our 
way,  it  will  be  easier  to  hear  all  the  things  they 
may  say  against  us  and  bear  all  the  things  they 
do  ?  Don't  you  think  we've  robbed  Mrs.  Parker 
and  Mrs.  Smith  and  the  rest  of  them  of  their 
sting  ?  " 

She  didn't  answer  right  away,  but  after  a  little 

she  said :  "  I  don't  care  about  those  things  any 

more,    anyway.     Really    I    don't.     I've    been 

wondering  lately  why  I  ever  did   care.     The 

251 


Roger   Drake 

little  troubles  seem  so  far  away  that  I've  almost 
forgotten  them  altogether." 

She  moved  a  little  closer  to  me.  "  Do  you 
know  what  has  made  the  difference  ?  "she  asked. 
"  It's  because  I  think —  I'm  almost  sure  —  " 

And  then  Barget  told  me  her  secret.  I  un- 
derstood the  look  in  her  eyes  now,  and  I  could 
guess  why  the  little  tangles  and  trials  of  life  fell 
away  from  her  as  she  looked  at  the  veil  of  mys- 
tery, the  mystery  of  motherhood,  which  had 
appeared  before  her. 

As  soon  as  I  could  work  through  the  accu- 
mulation of  matters  which  had  come  up  while 
I  was  away,  we  closed  the  big  house  in  Pros- 
pect Avenue  and  went  back  home,  to  our  real 
home  up  at  the  head  of  Father  Jansen's  peace- 
ful valley.  I  could  not  drop  my  work  entirely. 
I  used  to  make  a  trip  to  the  city  every  day  to 
keep  things  straight  and  see  that  nothing  unfore- 
seen turned  up,  but  for  as  much  of  every  day 
as  possible  I  was  with  Barget,  on  the  river  or 
among  the  goldenrod,  for  that  was  the  season. 

When  those  days  passed  and  the  winter 
came,  there  were  the  long  evenings  when  after 
supper  we  would  hear  the  tramp  of  horses  at 
our  door,  and  Father  Jansen  and  Gus  would 
come  in  and  sit  with  us  around  the  fire ;  and 
the  air  would  be  fragrant  with  the  smoke  of 
252 


Roger   Drake 

father's  pipe,  and  our  thoughts  with  the  little 
flowers  of  his  sweet  philosophy. 

After  a  while  a  nurse  was  added  to  our 
family,  and  then  one  day  in  the  height  of  a 
March  blizzard,  the  last  of  the  winter,  my 
train  behind  three  locomotives  and  a  plough 
bucked  its  way  out  from  Red  City  with  a 
doctor  in  my  car.  But  the  storm  was  over 
and  the  sun  shining  on  the  white  fields  when 
Barget  bore  me  her  first  son. 

And  when  she  was  able  to  walk  with  me  to 
our  door  and  look  off  down  the  valley,  the 
snow  was  gone  and  the  fields  were  alive  again. 


253 


CHAPTER   XI 

IN  the  old  days  when  I  had  just  begun  to 
realize  that  my  wealth  could  be  used  to 
procure  me  luxuries  of  one  sort  and  another, 
when  I  had  but  recently  abandoned  my  board- 
ing-house for  a  private  car,  I  used  sometimes, 
when  the  day's  work  in  Red  City  was  done,  to 
look  at  my  watch  and  break  into  a  run  for  my 
train,  just  as  though  it  would  have  gone  with- 
out me.  When  I  caught  myself  at  that  I  felt 
a  little  foolish,  but  the  sudden  consciousness 
of  leisure  which  came  afterward  was  always 
pleasant.  In  much  the  same  way  now,  though 
I  had  practically  cornered  the  coal  supply  and 
could  well  afford  to  wait,  I  used  to  find  myself, 
every  little  while,  in  the  old  furious  hurry  for 
something  to  turn  up  which  would  end  the 
fight.  Whenever  I  got  into  that  state  of  mind 
I  used  to  lock  up  my  desk  and  take  a  holi- 
day ;  that  was  according  to  an  agreement  with 
Barget. 

For  several  months  after  I  set  Pendleton's 
agency  investigating  Reech's  investments,  vica- 
254 


Roger   Drake 

rious  and  personal,  in  Red  City  and  Texas 
stock,  I  heard  nothing  from  it.  That  was  as 
I  had  agreed  with  them,  for  I  cared  nothing 
about  details ;  when  they  got  some  result,  or 
decided  that  there  was  no  result  to  be  got,  they 
were  to  let  me  know.  But  one  day  a  short, 
stout  man  with  a  heavy  moustache,  came  into 
my  office,  announced  that  he  was  one  of  the 
superintendents  of  the  agency,  and  had  come  to 
talk  about  the  Reech  affair. 

When  he  was  seated  he  took  out  a  pocket- 
book  about  the  size  of  a  lady's  card-case, 
removed  from  it  three  or  four  memorandum 
slips  closely  covered  with  very  fine  writing, 
and  spread  them  on  my  table.  They  were 
numbered  like  library  cards,  except  that  the 
number  was  the  same  on  all  of  them. 

"That's  the  way  you  designate  our  friend, 
is  it  ? "  I  asked,  and  he  said  it  was. 

"  I  hope  you  have  good  news  for  me,"  said  I. 

"  That  depends  on  what  you  want,"  he  an- 
swered. "  No,  I  don't  believe  I  have.  You 
asked  us  to  get  you  some  information  about 
Reech's  transactions  in  Red  City  and  Texas 
stock,  how  much  he  bought,  whom  he  bought  it 
of,  what  he  paid  for  it.  Well,  practically 
speaking,  we  haven't  any,  and  we've  been 
over  the  ground  pretty  carefully,  too. 
255 


Roger   Drake 

"  Then  you  think  it's  not  worth  while  going 
farther  with  it  ?  " 

"  That's  what  I  came  to  talk  over  with  you," 
he  answered.  "  Again,  it  depends  on  what  you 
want,  how  much  time  and  money  you're  will- 
ing to  spend  at  it.  Now  though  we  don't 
know  what  his  transactions  were,  we  can  assure 
you  that  they  weren't  straight." 

"  How  do  you  make  that  out  ?  "  I  demanded. 

"  Because  the  fellow  covered  up  his  tracks. 
I  have  been  over  very  carefully  the  reports  of 
the  men  we  had  on  the  work.  As  I  said,  they 
did  it  thoroughly.  If  what  he  did  had  been 
regular  and  above  board,  we  should  have  been 
able  to  give  you,  long  ago,  a  full  account  of  it. 
But  this  is  what  we  find :  a  record  destroyed 
here,  a  book  stolen  there,  a  receipt  asked  for 
and  not  given,  and,  in  short,  a  mystery  which- 
ever way  we  turn.  The  man  was  skilful,  and 
he  was  deliberate,  and  when  a  man  uses  those 
qualities  to  hide  his  tracks  in  a  transaction  of 
that  sort,  you  can  be  moderately  sure  there's 
something  irregular  about  it." 

"  That's  good  as  far  as  it  goes,  but  it  must 
go  farther.  The  theory  would  have  a  short 
hearing  in  a  court.  And  you  think  it's  im- 
possible to  go  farther  ?  " 

"  Not  at  all,"  he  protested  vehemently,  for 
256 


Roger   Drake 

there  I  touched  his  professional  pride.  "  Don't 
understand  me  so  for  a  moment.  I  think  we 
can  get  what  you  want,  but  it  will  take  time 
and  money.  I  don't  know  how  much  money 
or  how  much  time,  and  I  want  your  authority 
before  expending  it." 

"  Good,"  said  I.  "  Now  we'll  understand 
each  other.  I  don't  care  how  much  time  or 
money  you  take,  if  at  the  end  you  can  bring 
me  proof  strong  enough  to  carry  conviction. 
I  don't  limit  you  to  his  transactions  in  Red 
City  and  Texas  stock ;  if  any  other  *  irregu- 
larities '  come  your  way,  bring  them  along,  too. 
Get  it  in  black  and  white." 

He  nodded.  "  I  see  what  you  mean,"  he 
said.  "  You  want  it  in  such  form  that  its  pur- 
port will  be  immediately  apparent  —  to  Reech 
himself,  let  us  say. 

"  You  understand,"  said  I. 

That  was  the  one  incident  in  a  good  many 
months  that  had  anything  to  do  with  the  cop- 
per war.  Routine  business  went  on  as  it 
always  does ;  every  now  and  then  would  come 
another  short  advance  in  the  price  of  coal,  fol- 
lowed by  a  suppressed  disturbance  in  the  camp 
of  the  enemy,  —  for  Stanley,  as  I  had  hoped, 
was  cutting  down  rebates,  —  and  I  said  nothing 
and  awaited  the  issue  very  contentedly, 
s  257 


Roger  Drake 

Fletcher  paid  us  a  long  visit  during  those 
months,  and  with  him  our  household  was  so 
complete  that  I  begrudged  more  than  ever  the 
hours  I  had  to  spend  down  in  the  city.  His 
acquaintance  with  Father  Jansen  became,  before 
they  had  spent  a  whole  evening  together,  a  warm 
friendship.  While  I  was  away,  Fletcher  used 
to  ride  around  the  farm  with  the  old  gentleman 
as  he  superintended  the  work,  and  in  the  even- 
ing they  talked  us  all  to  bed  and  I  don't  know 
how  long  afterwards.  I  think  Father  Jansen 
was  happier  in  those  days  than  he  had  been  in 
many  years  before.  He  had  both  his  children 
with  him  again,  and  Fletcher  and  I  added 
something,  but  above  and  before  all  was  his 
grandson  and  namesake,  the  orbit  round  whom 
all  of  us  revolved,  the  baby.  He  used  to 
take  him  riding,  holding  him  up  in  one  arm 
while  he  managed  his  horse  with  the  other 
hand,  talking  to  him  gravely,  expounding  the 
mysteries  of  the  universe,  and  smiling  content- 
edly when  the  baby  flapped  his  arms  and  crowed 
in  response.  Those  were  good  days. 

The  lull,  however,  was  only  that  which  they 
say  precedes  the  storm.  When  things  did  begin 
to  happen,  they  happened  fast  enough  to  make 
up  for  the  delay. 

It  was  politics  which  brought  the  active 
258 


Roger   Drake 

resumption  of  hostilities.  When  the  time  for 
the  State  election  of  a  new  governor  drew  near 
enough  to  be  talked  about  and  planned  for,  I 
called  a  little  conference  at  the  City  Club  one 
evening,  which  was  attended  by  Dutton  and 
Judge  Anderson  and  Cooper  —  one  of  my  com- 
petitors —  and  two  or  three  of  the  other  leaders 
in  our  party  politics. 

It  was  plain  that  it  was  going  to  be  a  difficult 
matter  to  plan  a  campaign  which  should  give 
us  control  of  the  State  again.  Our  opponents, 
headed  by  Stanley,  were  strongly  intrenched  in 
all  the  important  and  remunerative  offices,  and 
in  trying  to  drive  them  out  we  should  be  handi- 
capped by  the  absence  of  any  definite  issue,  any 
particularly  resonant  battle  cry  except  those 
which  national  politics  might  furnish  us  with, 
and  as  it  was  not  a  Presidential  election,  those 
would  fall  rather  flat. 

Our  conference  also  developed  the  fact  that  it 
wouldn't  be  easy  to  find  the  right  man  to  head 
the  ticket.  Name  after  name  was  suggested, 
but  each  was  followed  by  some  cogent  reason 
why  he  wouldn't  do.  At  the  end  of  an  hour 
of  that  sort  of  thing  we  all  looked  rather  blank. 

"  See  here,"  said  I  at  last,  "  I  think  we're 
barking  up  the  wrong  tree.  The  men  we've 
been  talking  about  are  all  professionals.  But 
259 


Roger   Drake 

if  we  took  some  man  from  private  life,  who  is 
able,  and  who  hasn't  any  soiled  pages  to  turn 
back  to,  and  made  him,  personally,  the  issue 
of  the  campaign,  —  sort  of  anti-machine  thing, 
you  know,  —  I  believe  we'd  stand  a  chance  to 
win.  Otherwise  I  don't  think  there's  the 
shadow  of  a  chance." 

"  Who's  the  man  ?  "  asked  Cooper.  "  You 
have  one  on  your  tongue." 

"Lawrence,"  said  I. 

Cooper  laughed.  "  He'd  no  more  take  it 
than  you  would,  or  I.  With  his  practice,  and 
his  money,  and  his  influence,  what  does  he 
want  to  be  a  figure-head  for  ?  That  would  be 
our  game  clear  enough,  though,  if  we  could 
get  him."  The  others  agreed  with  Cooper. 

"  Well,  I  believe  I  can  get  him,"  said  I ; 
and  with  the  understanding  that  I  was  to  talk 
it  over  with  him,  we  parted. 

Lawrence  justified  my  faith  in  him.  I  think 
New  Englanders  hold  public  service  of  any 
kind  in  higher  esteem  than  most  men  from 
other  parts  of  the  country  do,  unless  in  the 
Southern  States,  which  I  know  nothing  about. 
Lawrence,  at  least,  as  I  knew  well,  took  higher 
ground  in  these  matters  than  I,  or  any  other 
of  my  business  associates  in  Red  City.  He 
valued  his  independence,  his  private  influence, 
260 


Roger   Drake 

his  very  lucrative  law  practice,  as  highly  as  any 
man  could,  but  he  rated  his  duty  to  his  coun- 
try as  paramount  to  all  these,  and  when  I 
offered  him  the  nomination  as  I  did  the  day 
after  our  conference,  he  regarded  his  acceptance 
as  a  matter  of  course,  and  with  more  emotion 
than  I  had  ever  seen  him  show  before,  told 
me  how  glad  he  was  that  we  thought  him 
worthy  so  high  an  honor.  And  that  in  spite 
of  the  fact  that  he  knew  all  the  ins  and  outs, 
the  twists  and  turns,  of  machine  politics  !  In 
fact,  I  had  tapped  the  one  well  of  sentiment  in 
the  whole  wide  area  of  Lawrence's  mind. 

"  Have  you  read  this  morning's  Argus  ?  " 
he  asked,  as  I  was  going  out. 

I  said  I  hadn't  yet,  and  asked  what  was  in 
it.  He  showed  me  an  editorial,  and  asked  me 
if  I  didn't  think  that  pointed  to  the  selection 
of  Reech  to  head  the  opposing  ticket. 

"It  looks  that  way,"  said  I,  "though  it's 
almost  too  good  to  be  true.  We  can  beat 
Reech." 

Moreover,  it  went  to  show,  even  more 
clearly  than  Reech's  election  as  vice-president 
of  the  Red  City  and  Texas  had  done,  that  he 
must  have  a  terribly  tight  hold  oh  Stanley. 
And  to  go  one  step  farther,  the  tighter  he  held 
Stanley,  the  better  game  he  was  for  me. 
261 


Roger   Drake 

It  wasn't  many  days  later  that  Reach's 
"boom"  for  governor  was  fairly  and  formally 
launched.  The  day  after  that  happened  I 
wrote  a  letter  to  my  stout  friend,  the  assistant 
superintendent  of  the  detective  agency,  and 
urged  him  to  put  on  more  steam. 

"  You  can  have  all  the  money  you  can 
spend,"  said  I,  "  but  from  now  on  your  time 
is  limited.  If  ordinary  methods  don't  work, 
take  extraordinary  ones.  The  matter's  serious, 
and  it's  now  or  never." 

He  replied  that  they  would  do  all  that 
human  ingenuity  could  suggest,  and  I  thought 
if  that  was  the  case,  results  would  soon  come 
pouring  in.  Really,  when  it  was  all  over,  and 
I  had  the  story,  or  bits  of  it,  from  the  superin- 
tendent, it  seemed  as  though  he  had  made  good 
his  promises. 

But  for  a  while  there  was  no  change ;  weekly 
reports  which  they  were  sending  me  seemed  to 
show  no  advance  whatever.  The  crisis  drew 
nearer.  Reech  was  either  "foisted  upon  the 
convention  by  the  most  flagrant  and  disgusting 
gang  methods,  and  in  flat  defiance  of  the  decent 
and  intelligent  element  in  the  party,"  or  else 
he  was  "  proclaimed  the  leader  amid  a  mighty 
outburst  of  spontaneous  enthusiasm,"  according 
to  which  newspaper  you  read ;  our  own  nomi- 
262 


Roger   Drake 

nating  convention  was  only  a  few  weeks  off,  and 
still  my  case  against  Reech  was  a  feeble  one. 

But  at  last  my  pack  caught  the  scent,  and 
when  they  did,  it  was  wonderful  what  short 
work  they  made  of  it.  One  discovery  trod  on 
the  heels  of  another,  and  the  two  taken  together 
constituted  a  third,  and  so  it  piled  up  like  a 
snowball  rolled  down  hill,  or  a  "  loan  shark's  " 
interest  charges.  And  just  a  week  before  the 
date  set  for  our  nominating  convention,  which 
was  to  select  Lawrence,  my  stout  superintend- 
ent came  into  my  office,  and  laid  a  large  enve- 
lope on  my  desk.  It  bore  the  same  numerals 
which  I  had  seen  on  the  memorandum  slips,  — 
Reech's  number. 

"  I  think,  sir,"  said  the  superintendent,  with 
becoming  modesty,  "  that  we  may  say  we  have 
made  our  case."  It  took  me  nearly  an  hour  to 
digest  the  contents  of  the  envelope ;  but  when 
I  had  done  so,  I  agreed  with  him. 

Then  I  telephoned  to  Reech  at  his  political 
headquarters,  and  asked  him  to  come  up  to  my 
office  as  soon  as  he  could,  on  a  matter  of  im- 
portance. He  was  greatly  surprised  that  I 
should  ask  for  him,  was  inclined  to  think  he 
couldn't  come,  but  after  a  moment  said,  rather 
uneasily,  that  he  would. 

He  was  brazen  enough  when  he  arrived, 
263 


Roger   Drake 

bringing  one  of  his  lieutenants  with  him,  saying 
pompously  that  he  thought  fit  at  a  conference 
between  opponents  on  the  eve,  as  it  were,  of 
battle,  to  have  a  witness. 

"All  right,"  said  I.  "If  you  want  a  witness, 
I  don't  mind.  I  want  a  little  talk  with  you 
about  your  stock  in  Red  City  and  Texas 
Railroad." 

He  started  a  little  and  flushed  at  that,  but 
recovered  admirably.  "  I  thought  it  must  be 
some  political  matter  or  I  shouldn't  have  come," 
he  said,  looking  at  his  watch.  "  I  hardly  feel 
that  I  can  give  the  time —  Well,  I  will  spare 
half  an  hour.  But  I  won't  detain  you,  Mr. 
Quin,  over  a  small  matter  like  this."  Where- 
upon Quin  took  his  leave. 

Then  Reech  turned  to  me,  another  man, 
angry  and  yet  half  afraid.  "  What  the  devil  do 
you  want  of  me  ?  "  he  demanded. 

"Sit  down,"  said  I.  "There's  nothing  to 
get  excited  about.  I  want  to  persuade  you  to 
sell  me  your  stock  in  the  Red  City  and  Texas 
Railroad.  I  think  you  have  enough  to  give  me 
control  of  the  road,  and  the  control  of  the  road 
is  what  I  want,  just  as  I  did  years  ago." 

He  laughed.     It  was  meant  to  be  scornful, 
but  it  sounded  nervous.    "  You  want  my  stock, 
eh,  and  the  control  of  the  road  ?  " 
264 


'  WHAT  THE  DEVIL  DO  YOU  WANT  OF  ME  ? '  " 


Roger   Drake 

I  was  waiting  to  see  what  line  he'd  take,  so  I 
said  nothing.  He,  too,  seemed  a  little  in  doubt 
as  to  what  would  be  his  best  course,  but  pres- 
ently he  made  a  start.  He  laughed  again,  this 
time  in  imitation  of  pure  amusement.  "  Really, 
Drake,"  he  said,  "  I  don't  know  what's  put  an 
idea  like  that  in  your  head.  I'm  not  a  rich 
man.  I  haven't  but  a  share  or  two  in  the  Red 
City  and  Texas ;  just  enough  to  enable  me  to 
serve  as  a  director.  What  shares  I  hold  practi- 
cally belong  to  Mr.  Stanley.  I'm  not  at  liberty 
to  sell  them." 

"  Reech,"  said  I,  "this  isn't  child's  play. 
It's  business.  Do  you  suppose  I'd  have  sent 
for  you  if  I  didn't  know  better  than  that  ?  I'm 
not  asking  you  to  give  me  the  stock.  I'm 
asking  you  to  sell  it,  and  I'll  pay  a  good  price 
for  it." 

His  moderate  measure  of  success  had  not 
improved  Reech.  He  had  once  been  alert, 
quick  to  see  a  point,  and  able,  on  occasion  to 
go  straight  to  it.  But  the  very  glibness  which 
had  served  him  so  well  seemed  to  have  weak- 
ened his  mind.  He  believed  his  own  lies  now. 
He  talked  along  for  a  while  as  though  he  were 
making  a  campaign  speech  on  the  evils  of  the 
money  power.  "  I  am  bound  to  Mr.  Stanley, 
my  honor  is  bound  to  him,  yet  by  the  brutal 
265 


Roger   Drake 

strength  of  your  wealth  you  would  compel  me 
to  sell  that  honor,  to  submit  to  insult  —  " 

"Stop  it,"  said  I,  shortly.  "You  know  you 
are  as  common  as  a  public  road.  It  is  impos- 
sible to  insult  you.  Your  services  were  in  the 
open  market  years  ago  when  you  were  my  con- 
fidential agent.  Stanley  bought  them.  I  want 
to  buy  them  back." 

He  turned  purple  with  anger  and  tried  to  say 
something,  but  I  went  steadily  on.  "  There's 
no  question  of  honor  about  it.  If  I  climb  into 
a  street  car,  I  know  I'm  in  a  public  conveyance. 
I  don't  get  mad  when  another  man  gets  in. 
Well,  Stanley  knew  what  he  was  getting  into. 
There's  no  injustice  to  him  if  I  ride  too.  Now, 
you're  a  shrewd  man  and  an  able  man.  I  re- 
spect those  qualities.  You  took  up  a  strong 
position  in  this  fight  between  Stanley  and  me. 
We  were  on  the  ends  of  the  teeter  board,  and 
you  got  up  in  the  middle.  You  controlled  the 
situation.  Now  I  want  you  to  put  your  weight 
on  my  side." 

"  I'll  be  frank  with  you,"  he  said.  "  I'll  admit  I 
do  control  the  situation ;  while  you  two  were  fight- 
ing I  carried  off  the  bone.  It's  mine,  and  I'll 
sell  it.  But  you'll  have  to  pay  my  price.  Cer- 
tainly you'll  recognize  that  it's  proper  for  the  man 
who  controls  the  situation  to  make  the  terms." 
266 


Roger   Drake 

"  Go  on,"  said  I.  "  The  man  who  controls 
the  situation  shall  make  the  terms." 

He  leaned  back  in  his  chair,  lazily  lighted  a 
cigar  and  puffed  away  at  it  for  a  minute  or  two 
in  silence,  smiling  as  insolently  as  possible.  I 
picked  up  the  big  envelope  with  the  number, 
his  number,  on  it,  and  turned  it  over  in  my 
hand. 

"  Money  alone  couldn't  tempt  me  to  sell," 
he  began.  "  I  want  a  favor  of  you,  besides.  I 
want  you  to  help  me." 

"  Wait  a  bit,"  said  I.  "  You'll  save  time  if 
you'll  hear  me  first.  Six  weeks  ago  if  I'd 
sent  for  you,  you  could  have  dictated  terms. 
I  didn't  send  for  you  then,  because  your  terms 
would  have  been  impossible.  But  to-day  the 
advantage  is  the  other  way  about.  Here's  my 
offer.  I  will  pay  for  your  stock,  provided  you 
deliver  me  enough  to  give  me  control  of  the 
road,  the  regular  market  rate." 

He  laughed  at  me.  "  I  wouldn't  consider 
twice  that,"  he  said. 

"Wait  till  I'm  through.  I'll  do  you  a 
favor  besides.  I'll  destroy  the  contents  of  this 
envelope." 

His  face  went  blank ;  then  as  some  inkling 
of  the  situation  came  to  him,  it  flushed  deeper 
and  deeper,  and  the  big  veins  in  his  neck 
267 


Roger   Drake 

swelled  and  knotted.  He  thrust  his  head  for- 
ward over  the  table  that  was  between  us. 
"  Blackmail,  eh  !  "  he  said. 

"  Call  it  what  you  like,"  I  answered.  "  My 
name  for  it  is  simply  Justice,  and  it's  hardly 
that  either.  You  stole  that  stock  from  me. 
You  bought  it  with  my  money,  and  by  mak- 
ing a  false  account  you  contrived  to  keep  it. 
I'm  going  to  make  you  give  it  up,  but  I'd 
rather  make  a  bargain  with  any  man  than  fight 
him,  and  for  that  reason  I  offer  you  the  market 
rate  for  it.  Think  it  over." 

He  lost  control  of  himself  for  a  moment  and 
poured  out  on  me  a  stream  of  vile  abuse, 
threats,  and  curses.  But  that  exercise  seemed 
to  relieve  his  mind ;  he  quieted  down  directly, 
and  took  my  advice. 

"  That's  your  side  of  it,"  he  said  after  a 
little.  "  Now  here's  mine.  I'll  accept  the 
market  rate  for  the  stock  and  you  burn  that 
envelope.  I  suppose  it's  some  nasty  story 
you've  raked  up  out  of  the  gutter  and  mean 
to  use  to  spoil  my  chance  for  election.  But 
you've  got  to  throw  Lawrence  overboard.  I 
suppose  his  nomination  at  your  convention 
next  week  is  all  cut  and  dried.  I'd  rather  run 
against  somebody  else,  Ryan  or  Harmon.  It 
improves  my  chance  to  win.  And  on  the  day 
268 


Roger  Drake 

I'm  elected  I'll  turn  the  stock  over  to  you. 
That's  a  fair  trade. 

"  You  ought  to  bear  in  mind  when  you're 
dealing  with  a  man,"  said  I,  slowly,  "  that  there 
isn't  one  chance  in  a  thousand  that  he's  as 
great  a  rascal  as  you  are.  If  you'd  done  that, 
you'd  never  have  made  that  proposition  to  me. 
I'm  not  in  that  line  of  business.  I'll  do  just 
what  I  said  I  would  for  you  and  no  more. 
I'll  burn  what  I've  got  in  this  envelope.  And 
then  when  I've  got  the  stock  I'll  fight,  as  I 
never  did  before  in  a  political  campaign,  to  beat 
you." 

"  Go  ahead,  then,  and  publish  your  story, 
and  see  what  you  make  of  it,  damn  you  !  I'm 
not  afraid  of  you ;  I  don't  need  your  help. 
And  when  I'm  elected  if  I  don't  make  the 
State  too  hot  for  you  !  —  " 

He  was  on  his  feet,  and  leaning  over  the 
table  brandishing  his  fist  in  my  face.  "  Sit 
down  again,"  said  I,  "  and  read  what's  in  this 
envelope." 

I  tossed  it  on  the  table.  "  You  don't  know 
what  it  means  yet,"  said  I.  "It  means  stripes, 
Reech,  and  the  lock  step,  and  a  number,"  and 
I  tapped  with  my  lead-pencil  the  number  on 
the  face  of  it.  "  Read  it,"  I  repeated. 

He  smiled  when  he  saw  what  the  contents 
269 


Roger   Drake 

of  the  dossier  were  concerned  with ;  he  was 
confident,  I  suppose,  that  there  was  no  possibil- 
ty  of  proving  a  felony  in  the  maze  of  tracks  and 
(doublings  which  his  dealings  in  the  Red  City  and 
Texas  stock  had  left  behind.  But  as  he  went 
on,  and  saw  that  the  proof  was  there,  double 
and  treble  proof,  the  color  began  to  leave  his 
face,  and  when  he  finished  he  was  sickly  white. 

"Shall  we  burn  it?  "  I  asked.     He  nodded. 

He  wanted  it  done  there  and  then.  "  As 
soon  as  you  please,"  said  I.  "  Have  you  your 
certificates  of  stock  with  you  ?  " 

They  were  in  the  private  safe  in  his  office, 
he  said.  I  tore  a  blank  check  out  of  my  book, 
put  the  dossier  in  my  pocket,  and  said  we'd  go 
over  there  together.  He  seemed  dazed  fairly, 
and  I  had  to  help  him  to  his  feet  and  lead  him 
to  the  door  to  get  him  started. 

We  walked  across  the  city,  and  by  the  time 
we  reached  his  office  he  had  recovered  enough 
to  try  to  evade  me  again. 

The  certificates  weren't  in  his  safe,  after  all, 
but  at  the  bank,  and  he  would  bring  them  in 
the  morning.  I  said  that  one  time  was  as  good 
as  another  and  started  away,  but  before  I  had 
got  halfway  down  the  stairs,  he  called  me  back 
and  said  he  had  found  them. 

So  I  sat  down  at  his  desk,  added  up  the 
270 


I 


X 
C/3 


Roger   Drake 

amount  they  stood  for,  and  when  I  found  it 
was  all  right  I  filled  out  my  blank  check.  Then 
I  threw  down  on  the  desk  the  result  of  the 
labors  of  Pendleton's  agency,  —  the  superin- 
tendent had  feelingly  called  it  a  masterpiece, 
—  and  told  Reech  to  do  what  he  liked  with  it. 
He  had  been  sitting  at  the  other  side  of  the 
room,  cursing  me  under  his  breath,  but  at  that 
he  sprang  forward,  and  pouncing  on  the  little 
bundle  of  papers,  began  tearing  at  it  like  a  wild 
beast. 

I  left  him  to  his  own  devices  and  walked  back 
to  my  office  with  the  Red  City  and  Texas  Rail- 
road in  my  pocket.  It  was  the  flier,  after  all, 
that  had  won  the  game. 

Or,  if  it  wasn't  won  yet,  the  cards  were  all 
in  my  hands.  It  was  simply  a  question  of 
playing  them.  I  have  always  thought  that  the 
end  would  have  been  the  same,  though  it  would 
have  been  delayed,  if  we  hadn't  made  our  case 
against  Reech ;  that  with  my  grip  on  the  coal 
market  I  could  have  shaken  Stanley's  dissatis- 
fied allies  away  from  him  and  gathered  them 
around  me,  and  that  we  could  have  formed  an 
independent  connection  with  the  outside  world 
by  paralleling  the  Red  City  and  Texas  down  to 
Brutus,  and  from  there  have  used  my  line  to 
North  Marion  and  the  branch  of  the  Northern 
271 


Roger   Drake 

there  to  Bridgetown.  But  my  successful 
coercion  of  Reech  offered  a  short  cut  to  victory, 
of  which  I  was  glad  to  avail  myself. 

There  was  no  need  for  haste,  however,  and 
I  wanted  to  get  the  political  campaign  off  my 
hands  before  turning  against  Stanley.  Lawrence 
was  proving  a  good  candidate,  though  the  man- 
agers complained  that  his  stump  speeches  were 
exactly  like  his  arguments  before  the  Supreme 
Court.  But  though  some  of  the  auditors  about 
his  stump  might  not  understand  him,  and  though 
all  were  disappointed  not  to  be  treated  to  a  dis- 
play of  oratorical  fireworks,  still  they  believed 
in  him.  They  flocked  in  hundreds  to  hear 
Reech,  who  quite  outdid  himself  in  the  way 
of  eloquence,  but  on  election  day,  they  —  or  a 
comfortable  majority  of  them  —  turned  in  and 
voted  for  Lawrence.  He  carried  the  rest  of 
the  ticket  to  victory  with  him,  and,  by  a  narrow 
margin,  the  legislature.  We  have  succeeded  in 
holding  the  State  ever  since. 

Just  after  election  Reech  left  us,  and  has 
never  come  back.  He  judged,  I  suppose,  and 
rightly,  that,  after  having  betrayed  both  sides 
in  the  fight,  and  failed  in  his  own  private  ven- 
ture, the  valley  of  the  Bent  River  would  not 
thereafter  furnish  a  profitable  field  for  opera- 
tions. I  suppose  he  turned  up  somewhere 
272 


Roger  Drake 

else,  with  a  new  name,  perhaps,  but  his  old 
assurance-  and  his  old  stories  of  great  men  he 
had  known,  looking  about,  as  he  had  looked 
in  Red  City,  for  something  good. 

The  political  campaign  had  been  a  hot  one, 
and  it  left  us  all  pretty  tired.  I  had  meant  to 
begin  the  new  campaign  against  Stanley  as  soon 
as  it  was  over,  but  Barget  persuaded  me  that 
after  the  holidays  would  do  just  as  well  as  now, 
so  I  took  a  vacation.  We  agreed  that  there 
was  no  place  where  we  could  have  so  good  a 
time  as  right  up  among  the  snowdrifts  at 
home,  so  there  we  stayed.  I  had  a  telegraph 
wire  over  from  the  Birthday,  and  as  I  was  a 
moderately  competent  operator,  if  I  was  allowed 
to  take  my  own  time,  I  could  decide  what  had 
to  be  decided  without  even  crossing  the  valley 
—  no  small  feat  when  the  snow  was  heavy. 

Barget  suggested  that  I  ask  Lawrence  to 
come  out  for  a  few  days,  including  Christmas. 
"  He  probably  hasn't  had  a  real  family  Christmas 
for  years  and  years,  and  he  must  be  tired,  too." 

"  He's  tired,  no  doubt,"  said  I.  "  Half  the 
population  of  the  State  is  sitting  around  in  his 
outer  office,  trying  to  hold  him  up  for  appoint- 
ments. But  I  doubt  if  he'd  have  a  good  time. 
!  think  he'd  rather  face  the  office-seekers  than 
ihe  baby.  He'd  be  afraid  of  the  baby." 
T  273 


Roger   Drake 

"He'll  like  the  baby,"  said  Barget,  indig- 
nantly. "  Just  ask  him  and  see." 

She  knows  so  much  more  than  I  do  about 
things  like  that,  and  has  proved  it  so  many 
times,  that  I  ought  to  take  her  prophecies  for 
inspired  authority  by  this  time,  though  I  still 
have  occasional  misgivings.  They  used  to  be 
stronger  then,  but  I  almost  always  gave  her  a 
chance  to  show  that  she  was  right.  I  asked 
Lawrence,  and  he  came,  and  he  postponed  his 
departure  twice,  going  back  to  Red  City  just 
in  time  to  be  inaugurated  on  New  Year's  day. 
When  he  wrote  Barget  a  note  of  thanks,  he 
sent  by  express,  under  other  cover,  an  iron 
fire-engine  for  the  baby. 

Early  in  January  we  opened  the  house  in 
Red  City,  and  I  went  to  work  in  earnest.  My 
first  move  was  to  give  a  small  luncheon  at  the 
City  Club,  and  at  the  time  set  I  awaited  the 
arrival  of  my  guests,  who  had  all  promised  to 
come,  with  a  good  deal  of  amusement.  Hal- 
stead  arrived  first,  then  Frankenburgher,  then 
Armstrong,  and  lastly  the  partners,  Cooper  and 
Rosenblum,  and  when  each  saw  who  the  other 
guests  were,  his  expression  of  mingled  surprise 
and  apprehension  made  it  difficult  for  me  to 
keep  down  a  smile.  The  news  of  my  acquisi- 
tion of  the  railroad  had  leaked  out,  and  was 


Roger  Drake 

pretty  generally  known.  The  unexplained  dis- 
appearance of  Reech  put  a  score  of  theories  in 
circulation,  and  my  competitors,  including  Stan- 
ley, had  spent  an  anxious  month,  wondering 
just  what  was  about  to  happen. 

So  when  the  five  mine  operators  who  had 
met  in  my  office  two  years  before  only  to  re- 
ject my  offer  of  an  alliance  and  make  an  agree- 
ment with  my  enemy,  found  themselves  again 
gathered  round  my  table,  I  don't  wonder  that 
they  did  some  lively  guessing.  When  we  got 
around  to  coffee  and  cigars,  I  asked  permission 
to  bring  up  a  matter  of  business,  and  they 
assented  with  the  most  cordial  unanimity. 

"  I've  no  doubt  that  you  remember,  in  a  gen- 
eral way,  a  proposition  which  I  made  to  you 
two  years  ago,"  I  began.  "  I  was  strongly  of 
opinion  then  that  it  would  be  to  your  interests 
as  well  as  to  mine,  and  to  mine  as  well  as  yours, 
to  form  an  active  alliance.  I  said  that  if  we 
could  combine  together  on  a  basis  which  gave 
exact  justice  to  each  of  us,  that  we  should  make 
more  money  than  if  each  should  spend  his  time 
in  trying  to  get  an  advantage  over  somebody 
else.  Now  I  believe  that  as  far  as  theory  went 
you  agreed  with  me,  and  that  the  only  reason 
why  you  didn't  feel  that  you  could  help  carry 
out  my  scheme  was  that  Mr.  Stanley,  whose 
275 


Roger   Drake 

views  in  such  matters  are  different  from  mine, 
was  in  a  position  to  make  another  proposition 
to  you.  It  wasn't  so  good  in  theory  as  mine, 
but  it  offered  some  immediate  and  tangible 
advantages  which  mine  didn't." 

Halstead  broke  in.  "  I  can't  answer  for  the 
bthers,  but  for  myself — "  And  he  went  on 
with  the  same  round-about  long-winded  reason- 
ing with  which  he  had  filled  his  long  letter  when 
two  years  before  he  had  declined  my  proposi- 
tion. Cooper  shifted  uneasily  in  his  chair  while 
this  went  on,  and  when  it  was  over  he  said  with 
a  somewhat  satirical  smile,  that  for  himself  and 
his  partner,  notions  of  humanity  and  the  solemn 
duty  of  competition  had  had  nothing  to  do  with 
the  case  ;  that  Stanley  had  showed  he  controlled 
the  situation,  had  offered  substantial  rebates  if 
they  would  let  me  alone,  and  none  at  all  if  they 
wouldn't,  and  that  it  had  seemed  to  be  to  their 
best  interest  to  accept  his  proposition.  "  That 
was  the  case  with  you,  too  ?  "  he  demanded 
of  Frankenburgher,  who  nodded  emphatically. 
When  Cooper  repeated  the  question  to  Arm- 
strong, he  also  answered  in  the  affirmative, 
though  a  little  more  reluctantly. 

"  Well,"  I  went  on,  "  since  those  days  con- 
ditions have  changed  materially  ;  as  between 
Stanley  and  me  they  have  practically  changed 
276 


Roger   Drake 

about.  I  am  in  as  strong  a  position  as  he  was 
in  then,  and  stronger.  I  could  offer  to  make 
with  you  the  same  kind  of  bargain  that  he  made 
two  years  ago." 

The  rest,  all  but  Cooper,  nodded,  though 
none  too  cheerfully.  He  looked  at  me  keenly 
as  though  puzzled. 

"  But,"  I  continued,  speaking  slowly  to  let 
what  I  had  to  say  sink  in,  "unless  I'm  mistaken 
that  bargain  didn't  prove  very  satisfactory  to 
any  of  you,  and  the  proposition  I  ask  your  con- 
sideration for  is  substantially  the  same  as  the 
one  I  made  two  years  ago." 

I  think  if  I  had  offered  Halstead  five  millions 
of  dollars  in  cash  he  would  not  have  been  taken 
more  completely  by  surprise,  and  Armstrong 
was  not  far  behind  him.  Cooper  and  his  part- 
ner, on  the  other  hand,  had  credited  me  with 
perfectly  good  faith  at  our  meeting  two  years 
before,  and  what  I  said  now  was  the  only  logi- 
cal sequence  to  the  scheme  I  had  put  forward 
then.  As  to  Frankenburgher,  nothing  you 
could  call  an  expression  ever  appeared  in  his 
stolid  face  anyway,  and  as  he  said  nothing,  I 
could  not  tell  what  he  thought  about  it. 

I  talked  a  little  while  longer ;  told  them  that 
I  was  acting  merely  as  my  best  interest  led  me, 
that  v  hile  my  control  of  the  railroad  made  it 
277 


Roger  Drake 

possible  for  me  to  put  the  screws  on  them,  to 
my  profit,  for  a  time,  yet  in  the  long  run  I 
should  make  more  money  by  getting  them  all 
to  pull  with  me. 

"  You  spoke  of  one  change  in  the  proposi- 
tion you  mean  to  make,"  said  Cooper.  "  What 
was  that  ?  " 

"At  that  other  meeting,"  said  I,  "  I  laid  a 
good  deal  of  stress  on  the  fact  that  I  was  not 
asking  you  to  side  with  me  against  any  one 
else ;  that  if  Stanley  should  be  willing  to  make 
himself  one  of  us,  I'd  be  glad  to  have  him. 
And  I  said  I  had  no  scores  to  settle  with  him 
or  any  one  else.  To-day  I  ask  leave  to  take 
that  back.  To-day  I  have  a  score  to  settle 
with  George  Stanley,  and  I  mean  to  do  it. 
He  is  a  personal  enemy  of  mine.  If  he  were 
to  come  to  terms  and  make  peace  now,  the 
arrangement  would  only  last  until  he  could  get 
me  at  a  disadvantage  again.  So  I  want  this 
clearly  understood :  that  I  will  not  cry  quits 
with  him,  on  any  terms,  until  he  packs  up,  bag 
and  baggage,  and  leaves  the  State." 

There  was  a  little  murmur  of  protest,  and 
Armstrong  said  :  "  You  can't  do  it.  You  may 
make  him  lose  money,  you  may  make  him 
damned  uncomfortable,  but  you  can't  drive  a 
man  who  owns  the  Croesus  mine  out  of  busi- 
278 


Roger  Drake 

ness.  He  could  keep  up  the  fight  for  a  life- 
time." 

"Well,"  said  I,  "it's  one  or  the  other  of  us. 
I'm  not  speaking  in  anger  or  above  the  letter. 
The  State  isn't  big  enough  for  both  of  us." 

No  one  said  anything  for  a  minute,  then  I 
went  on  :  "  It's  for  each  of  you  to  decide  which 
of  us  you  will  stand  with.  You  know  what 
kind  of  a  bargain  each  of  us  makes,  so  you 
aren't  taking  a  step  in  the  dark.  I  think  that 
if  you  will  add  up  the  interests  that  I  own  or 
control,  you  will  see  that  a  combination  with 
me  will  prove  much  stronger  than  any  com- 
bination you  can  make  against  me." 

"  There's  the  Birthday,"  said  Cooper,  "  and 
the  Northwestern  Ore  Company,  and  the  Red 
City  and  Texas  Railroad.  That's  all  the  big 
items  in  the  bill,  isn't  it  ? " 

"  One  more,"  said  I,  taking  a  look  around 
the  table.  "You  must  also  add  the  North 
Marion  coal  fields." 

Cooper,  s hrewd  as  he  was,  was  as  m  uch  surprised 
as  any  one,  and  the  rest  looked  pretty  blank. 

Armstrong  scratched  his  head.  "  I  take  it 
all  back,"  said  he.  "I  guess  I'll  elect  to  ride 
in  your  band  wagon."  The  others  hesitated  a 
moment  longer,  and  then  we  all  shook  hands 

over  it. 

279 


CHAPTER   XII 

hand-shake  and  the  "  Here's  luck  !  " 
JL  which  followed  it  marked  a  long  stride  in 
carrying  out  the  project  I  had  struggled  toward 
so  long,  but  it  didn't  take  us  out  of  the  woods 
by  any  means.  I  soon  saw  that  there  was  grave 
danger  ahead  in  little  personal  animosities  be- 
tween the  different  members  of  our  combination. 
Cooper  at  once  disliked  and  distrusted  Hal- 
stead,  as  I  was  inclined  to  do  myself,  until  I 
found  that  although  Halstead  wanted  to  appear 
better  than  the  rest  of  us,  he  was  really  no 
worse,  and  that  the  cant  of  his  explanations 
and  protestations  was  quite  harmless.  But 
Cooper  was  a  long  time  coming  to  that  view 
of  him.  Another  difficulty,  harder  to  put  up 
with  patiently,  was  Armstrong's  ill-concealed 
contempt  for  Rosenblum,  because  he  was  a 
Jew,  and  for  Frankenburgher ;  Armstrong  re- 
garding it  as  a  form  of  patriotism  to  look  down 
on  and  insult  all  foreigners.  He  never  spoke 
to  Rosenblum  at  all  when  he  could  help  it,  and 
he  bawled  at  poor  Frankenburgher  in  a  way 
that  roused  his  just  indignation. 
280 


Roger  Drake 

I  had  learned  long  ago  how  expensive  a 
merely  personal  prejudice  is  in  matters  of  busi- 
ness, and  I  did  not  err  in  that  way,  though  I 
discovered  that  in  another  I  was  causing  as 
much  dissatisfaction  as  any  one  else.  The  Ore 
Summit  partners  were  far  abler  than  any  of  my 
other  allies,  quicker  to  see  a  point,  and  apter 
to  stick  to  it,  and  I  drifted  into  a  way  of  ad- 
dressing my  suggestions  to  them;  then  when 
satisfied  by  Cooper's  curt  nod  of  approbation, 
or  the  shrewd,  appreciative  twinkle  in  Rosen- 
blum's  eye,  I  would  go  on  to  something  else, 
leaving  the  others  in  the  dark. 

But  all  these  little  frictions  slowly  wore  away 
under  the  good-humored  spirit  of  give  and  take 
which  pervaded  our  daily  counsels.  We  met 
every  day  just  as  we  had  at  first,  at  lunch  in  a 
private  dining  room  at  the  City  Club,  and  what 
really  saved  us  from  wreck  was,  that  we  lived 
up  to  the  agreement  we  made  at  the  outset ; 
that  all  discussion  of  the  affairs  of  the  trust  was 
to  take  place  "  about  and  above  "  this  board. 
There  were  no  private  confabs,  and  hence  there 
was  no  clique,  no  inner  circle,  and  precious 
little,  if  any,  suspicion  or  jealousy. 

The  organization  we  effected  was  the  regular 
old  style  "  trust,"  familiar,  I  suppose,  to  almost 
everybody.  The  companies  composing  it  re- 
281 


Roger  Drake 

tained  their  individual  corporate  existence,  but 
all  their  stock  was  lumped  together  to  form  a 
trust  fund,  and  against  this  fund  we  issued  cer- 
tificates. The  earnings  were,  of  course,  pooled, 
and  dividends  paid  on  the  certificates.  That 
organization  was  fairly  efficient,  and  as  it  was 
the  only  sort  we  knew  anything  about,  it  was 
natural  that  we  should  defend  its  legality  to  the 
last  ditch.  But  looking  back  now,  it  seems 
strange  that  it  was  not  until  the  Supreme 
Court,  by  a  square  blow  between  the  eyes, 
put  our  sort  of  pool  out  of  existence,  that  we 
thought  of  the  new  form  of  combination,  so 
much  more  efficient,  so  much  simpler,  and,  up 
to  now,  legally  impregnable. 

But  that  was  to  come  later,  and  the  old 
scheme  worked  well  while  it  lasted,  and  we 
began  to  save  money  right  away.  Our  first 
move  was  to  close  all  the  smelters  except  the 
Northwestern,  and  Frankenburgher's  down  the 
river,  where  the  falls  provided  an  unlimited 
power  for  practically  nothing.  Then  we  spared 
neither  thought  nor  money  in  bringing  these 
two  plants  to  the  very  highest  level  of  efficiency, 
and  the  result  was  no  less  gratifying  to  me,  who 
had  foreseen  it,  than  to  the  others,  who  had 
taken  up  the  plan  somewhat  reluctantly,  and 
who  were  vastly  surprised  by  the  gains  we 
282 


Roger   Drake 

made.  It  was  not  until  then,  until  our  in- 
creased profits  were  a  tangible  reality,  that  I 
felt  sure  that  my  long-cherished  scheme  was  a 
success. 

For  any  commercial  alliance  is  based  on  self- 
interest  alone,  and  all  the  theory  in  the  world 
is  no  good  unless  the  dividends  bear  it  out. 

So  much  for  ourselves ;  now  for  Stanley's 
side  of  it.  As  I  said,  he  knew  before  the  elec- 
tion that  he  had  lost  the  railroad,  and  he  took 
his  defeat  with  stoical  indifference,  and  when  the 
facts  concerning  our  pool  became  public  prop- 
erty, he  opened  hostilities  himself  with  a  fu- 
rious attack  upon  us.  I  was  glad  he  did,  for 
if  he  had  been  disposed  to  ask  us  for  terms,  it 
would  have  been  hard,  in  spite  of  my  resolu- 
tion, to  refuse  him. 

His  first  move  was  a  drastic  one,  obvious 
but  not  very  wise ;  a  deep  cut  in  the  price  of 
copper,  made  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  we  were 
producing  it  cheaper  than  he  could.  I  suppose 
he  thought  we  would  meet  his  price,  that  my 
allies  would  soon  grow  discontented  with  selling 
copper  at  a  loss,  would  abandon  me,  and  mix 
up  in  a  general  scramble.  But  we  didn't  meet 
his  price.  We  fixed  a  price  of  our  own  at 
which  we  made  a  small  though  decent  profit 
on  every  pound  we  sold,  and  there  we  held  it. 
283 


Roger  Drake 

He  could  market  all  his  copper,  it  is  true,  but 
it  was  at  a  loss,  and  when  people  had  bought 
his  they  had  to  buy  ours  too.  A  glance  at  the 
reported  consumption  of  copper  in  our  country 
during  those  years  when  electricity  was  striding 
forward  as  the  great  rival  of  steam,  will  make 
that  situation  clear.  And  so  while  he  lost  we 
gained. 

We  had  him,  in  fact,  bound  hand  and  foot. 
If  you  will  look  over  the  ground,  you  will  see 
how  true  that  is.  His  mine,  the  Croesus,  was 
richer  than  any  other  in  the  district,  except, 
perhaps,  the  Birthday,  but  we  more  than  made 
it  up  in  the  smelting,  for  what  we  did  by 
water  power  he  had  to  do  with  coal.  Remem- 
ber that  he  had  to  buy  his  coal  of  us.  His 
only  way  of  escape  was  shut  off  by  our  posses- 
sion of  the  railroad.  There  were  other  smelt- 
ers in  the  country,  where  power  was  free  and 
other  things  favorable,  which  could  be  made  to 
run  as  cheaply  as  ours,  and  if  he  could  have 
got  his  ore  to  them,  he  could  have  competed 
with  us  to  some  advantage.  But  we  could  put 
as  high  a  freight  tariff  on  ore  as  we  pleased,  for 
we  had  occasion  to  ship  nothing  ourselves  but 
refined  copper. 

I  confess  frankly  that  the  business  wasn't 
much  to  my  taste.  It  had  been  easy  when  I 
284 


Roger  Drake 

was  in  Stanley's  grip,  when  gossip  had  already 
set  the  date  for  the  completion  of  my  ruin,  to 
declare  that  some  day  I  should  deal  with  him 
as  he  was  trying  to  deal  with  me ;  it  had  still 
been  easy  when  the  outcome  hung  in  doubt  to 
plan  aggressively  and  eagerly  for  his  overthrow. 
But  now  that  I  had  him  fast  it  was  a  different 
matter  to  go  on  steadily  and  relentlessly  tight- 
ening the  screws.  There  seemed  to  be  nothing 
else  to  do.  I  am  sure  he  must  often  have 
studied  out  the  situation  and  have  seen,  as  I 
have  indicated  above,  that  it  was  hopeless. 
A  man  fighting  merely  for  a  commercial  advan- 
tage would  soon  have  given  up  the  fight,  but 
that  was  not  what  Stanley  was  fighting  for,  and 
after  the  struggle  had  gone  on  and  on,  always 
to  our  advantage,  but  never  to  the  enfeebling 
of  his  attack,  it  looked  as  though  Armstrong 
had  been  right  when  he  said  that  the  man  who 
owned  the  Croesus  could  never  be  completely 
routed. 

As  I  said  before,  I'm  not  trying  to  give  a 
history  of  the  war  as  a  whole.  We  attacked 
each  other  at  every  point,  and  the  State  was 
torn  in  two  by  our  quarrel.  He  attacked  us 
through  the  courts  whenever  he  could  find  a 
pretext,  and  we  him ;  he  raided  our  stocks  in 
Wall  Street  and  elsewhere,  and  we  retaliated 
285 


Roger   Drake 

upon  his ;  the  names  of  the  great  national 
parties  in  politics  were,  in  our  State,  the  most 
convenient  way  of  designating  his  faction  and 
mine.  The  row  was  carried  into  society,  into 
the  schools  and  the  churches,  it  was  in  the  air, 
and  all  the  while  the  din  of  it  was  echoed  in 
the  columns  of  the  Argus  and  the  Daily  News. 
When  I  think  back  over  those  times  and  re- 
member what  a  futile  affair  it  was,  and  how 
many  years  it  lasted,  dragging  itself  along  from 
month  to  month,  I  wonder  how  we  stood  it. 
I  suppose  we  got  so  used  it,  just  as  we  were 
used  to  sulphurous  acid  gas  before  I  improved 
the  smelter,  that  we  took  it  as  the  natural  state 
of  things. 

It  is  a  fact  which  has  often  impressed  me 
that  our  routine  affairs,  our  everyday  duties 
and  pleasures  and  annoyances,  make,  added 
together,  by  far  the  greater  part  of  our  lives, 
while  great  matters,  especially  unless  they  come 
very  close  home  and  affect  our  personal  com- 
fort, hold  a  very  subordinate  place.  A  nation 
may  be  at  war,  and  indeed  in  a  desperate 
plight,  but  the  lives  of  the  great  number  of  the 
citizens  go  on  pretty  much  the  same,  and  one 
enjoys  his  breakfast  even  if  the  newspaper  be- 
side his  plate  has  tidings  of  some  great  disaster. 

That  was  the  way  during  the  warfare  in  Red 
286 


Roger  Drake 

City.  It  seems,  looking  back  at  it,  as  though 
with  strokes  and  counter-strokes  following  as 
fast  as  they  did,  that  we  could  have  done 
nothing  but  fight,  that  the  ordinary  conduct  of 
business  must  have  been  suspended,  all  pleas- 
ures given  up,  and  that  we  must  have  lived 
every  hour  at  the  highest  tension  of  excitement. 
But  that  wasn't  the  case  at  all.  We  lived  just 
about  as  we  have  lived  since,  dividing  up  our 
time  between  the  big  house  in  Red  City  and 
the  smaller,  pleasanter  one  which  looked  out 
on  the  winding  river  and  Father  Jansen's  broad 
meadows.  We  took  little  vacation  trips,  too, 
and  some  more  extended  ones,  and  once  we 
got  as  far  away  as  Venice. 

By  a  tacit  understanding,  however,  Cooper 
and  Rosenblum  and  I  were  never  all  away  from 
the  post  of  duty  at  the  same  time.  The  others 
in  our  little  association  were  not  very  alert,  or 
quick  to  see  just  what  this  or  that  move  might 
mean,  and  alertness  was  still  necessary.  We 
had  Stanley  in  a  net,  it  is  true,  but  we  weren't 
sure  that,  if  left  quite  to  his  own  devices,  he 
might  not  break  out. 

We  recognized  pretty  clearly  that  there  were 

two   weak    spots    in    that    net,    and    those    we 

watched  most  carefully.     One  was  our  control 

of  his  transportation  facilities,  the   other,   the 

287 


Roger  Drake 

doubtful  legality  of  our  trust.  This  latter 
weakness  I  did  not  at  first  take  very  seriously, 
though  Lawrence,  who  saw  farther  ahead  than 
I,  warned  me  that  it  would  be  more  likely  to 
form  our  undoing  than  the  other. 

However,  during  the  earlier  years  of  the 
struggle,  the  former  danger  was  the  graver  one, 
and  he  came  rather  near  getting  one  or  two 
schemes  through  by  which  he  could  have 
transported  his  raw  ore  cheap  to  some  cheap 
smelter,  and  so  have  competed  with  us  on  even 
terms.  He  tried  to  get  in  with  the  Northern 
Railroad  first,  and  when  he  found  us  ahead  of 
him  there,  he  began  dickering  with  the  Chicago 
and  Pacific,  which  crosses  the  continent  two 
hundred  and  fifty  miles  farther  to  the  south. 
They  would  have  been  glad  enough  to  run  a 
branch  up  our  way  and  capture  some  of  the 
business  of  their  northern  competitor,  but  we 
got  wind  of  the  move  in  time  and  succeeded  in 
getting  through  a  territorial  agreement  between 
the  two  roads,  which  put  an  end  to  his  hopes 
from  that  quarter.  He  never  gave  up  fighting 
along  that  line,  though,  and  when  the  war  came 
to  an  end,  as  I  shall  recount  presently,  he  had 
a  railroad  from  Red  City  halfway  down  to 
Bridgetown,  every  inch  of  the  construction  of 
which  we  had  opposed. 
288 


Roger  Drake 

But  as  time  went  on,  and  with  Stanley's 
lessening  resources  the  danger  of  his  get- 
ting another  railroad  grew  less,  the  other 
danger  grew  correspondingly  greater.  There 
was  an  anti-trust  law  in  our  State ;  but 
though  it  was  extremely  stringent,  I  classed 
it  among  the  merely  ornamental  ones  which 
adorn  the  books.  The  best  lawyers  unani- 
mously declared  it  unconstitutional  by  virtue 
of  a  clause  which  excepted  from  its  provisions 
all  combinations  of  agriculturalists  or  stock- 
raisers. 

Stanley  brought  suit  against  us  under  this 
statute,  and  under  Button's  skilful  guidance 
—  Dutton  was  at  the  head  of  our  law  depart- 
ment now,  for  Lawrence  was  getting  ready  to 
go  to  the  Senate  —  under  his  guidance  the  case 
crawled  along  from  one  court  to  another,  toward 
Washington,  the  poor  statute  getting  a  sound 
drubbing  from  every  judge  who  passed  on  it 
until  at  last  the  Supreme  Court  put  it  out  of 
its  misery. 

But  our  glee  over  this  triumph  was  short- 
lived. Public  sentiment,  which  Lawrence  had 
talked  about  so  solemnly  years  before,  was 
aroused  all  over  the  country  against  trusts,  and 
not,  I  admit,  without  plenty  of  reason,  though 
much  of  the  manifestation  of  it,  in  the  news- 

u  289 


Roger   Drake 

papers  and  on  the  stump,  was  unreasonable 
enough.  Well,  we  snapped  our  fingers  at  it 
and  pretended  we  didn't  care,  but  the  great 
Public  did  care,  and  at  last  its  sentiment  crys- 
tallized into  a  Federal  statute  which  contained 
no  nonsense  about  "  farmers  and  stock-raisers." 
When  they  brought  suit  for  the  dissolution  of 
our  trust  under  that  statute,  the  shoe  was  on 
the  other  foot.  We  had  a  consultation  about 
it,  and  Dutton,  so  sure  before,  was  grave  and 
non-committal,  and  the  utmost  cheer  we  could 
get  out  of  him  was  that  we  weren't  whipped  yet. 
Lawrence,  whom  I  believe  to  be  one  of  the 
greatest  constitutional  lawyers  in  the  country, 
and  whom  I  hope  some  day  to  see  in  the 
Supreme  Court,  talking  the  case  over  with  me 
privately,  declared  point  blank  that  the  law 
would  "  hold  water,"  and  that  our  dissolution 
was  only  a  matter  of  time. 

"  Well,"  said  I,  "  then  we'll  make  the  time 
as  long  as  possible. 

That  was  the  course  Dutton  took,  and  every 
expedient  that  legal  skill  and  experience  could 
suggest  was  used  to  delay  the  end.  Indeed,  as 
is  well  known,  it  was  not  on  our  case,  but  on 
another  just  like  it  started  in  another  State  and 
put  forward  with  more  expedition,  that  the 
court  of  last  resort  passed  the  judgment  which 
290 


Roger  Drake 

once  and  forever  put  an  end  to  such  combina- 
tions of  capital  as  ours. 

We  were  not  taken  by  surprise,  but  that  fact 
made  the  last  meeting  of  the  directors  of  the 
Bent  River  Copper  Trust,  about  our  table  at 
the  City  Club,  none  the  less  gloomy.  We  had 
the  lawyers  there,  and  from  lunch  time  we 
talked  till  it  was  time  for  dinner,  and  then 
having  eaten  dinner,  without  leaving  our  chairs 
we  talked  along  into  the  evening  without  dis- 
covering the  easy  way  out  of  the  trouble.  We 
were  all  on  the  wrong  track.  What  we  tried 
to  hit  upon  was  an  agreement  loose  enough  to 
leave  us  outside  the  law  but  strong  enough  to 
keep  us  together.  If  there  was  a  plank  of 
safety  between  the  devil  and  the  deep  sea,  none 
of  us  was  shrewd  enough  to  find  it,  and  Button 
condemned  all  our  schemes  while  we  scoffed  at 
all  of  his. 

And  then,  about  ten  o'clock  at  night,  when 
we  had  exhausted  every  possibility,  and  sat 
staring  at  each  other,  mum  and  disgusted,  the 
great  inspiration  which  was  to  cut  short  Stan- 
ley's triumph  as  he  had  cut  short  ours,  the  plan 
on  which  we  ought  to  have  acted  years  before, 
the  plan  so  simple  that  it  should  have  taken  a 
great  genius  to  discover  it,  was  naively  put  for- 
ward by  the  stupidest  man  in  the  room. 
291 


Roger   Drake 

"  Damn  it,"  said  Armstrong,  for  that  was 
his  usual  preface,  "  I  say  we  let  the  law  go  to 
blazes  and  just  organize  one  big  company." 

He  went  on  talking,  but  none  of  us  heard 
him ;  we  just  sat  and  looked  blankly  at  him. 
Then  I  glanced  at  Cooper  and  found  him 
looking  at  me.  There  was  a  combination  of 
chagrin,  amusement,  and  triumph,  all  three,  in 
his  face,  and  I  felt  as  though  I  ought  to  be 
looking  the  same  way. 

"  Confound  you,"  said  Cooper  to  Armstrong. 
"  Why  didn't  you  say  that  two  hours  ago  ?  " 

"  Or  two  months  ?  "  said  I. 

"  I  didn't  mean  it  seriously,"  said  Armstrong. 
He  had  spoken  like  a  prophet,  not  knowing 
what  he  said. 

"  But  you  can  bet  your  bottom  dollar  we'll 
take  it  seriously,"  said  Cooper,  thumping  the 
table  so  that  the  glasses  jumped. 

I  turned  upon  Button.  "  Can  you  show  us 
anything  the  matter  with  that  ? "  I  demanded, 
but  Dutton  was  still  dazed. 

"  Look  !  "  I  went  on.    "  We  incorporate  —  " 

"  Under  the  laws  of  New  Jersey  —  "  put  in 
Cooper. 

"  Under  the  laws  of  New  Jersey,"  I  assented, 
"  the  —  the  Northwestern  Metals  Corporation. 
That  corporation  buys  —  buys,  mind  you  —  the 
292 


Roger   Drake 

White  Eagle  Mine,  the  Ore  Summit  Mines, 
Mr.  Halstead's  and  Mr.  Frankenburgher's 
mines,  and  the  Birthday,  besides  the  plant 
and  property  of  the  Northwestern  Ore  Com- 
pany. Is  there  anything  on  earth  to  prevent 
that?" 

"  Provided,  of  course,"  went  on  Cooper,  with 
a  grin,  "that  it  has  money  enough  and  the 
owners  can  be  induced  to  sell." 

"Yes,"  said  I.  "With  that  provision  can 
you  say  anything  against  the  legality  of  that, 
Mr.  Button  ? " 

"No,"  said  Button,  helplessly,  but  he  had 
not  got  over  the  shock  yet.  "  No,  I  cannot," 
he  repeated,  "but  —  but  I'm  not  ready  to  give 
you  an  opinion  on  it  to-night.  It's  altogether 
too  easy  to  be  true ;  that's  the  trouble  with 
it.  I'll  talk  with  you  about  it  in  a  day  or 
two." 

With  that  he  took  his  leave,  abruptly,  for 
the  scheme  had  given  him  a  tremendous  shak- 
ing up.  What  troubled  him  seemed  to  be  a 
line  of  reasoning  which  has  clouded  over  many 
a  problem  as  simple  as  two  and  two ;  namely, 
that  there  must  be  something  the  matter  with 
it,  or  so  absolutely  easy  a  solution  would  have 
occurred  to  him  long  ago. 

But  though  he  pondered  over  it  many  days 
293 


Roger   Drake 

and  consulted  about  it  for  many  more,  he  was 
not  able  to  discover  a  single  loop-hole  through 
which  the  existing  law  or  any  other  could 
be  invoked  against  us.  And  since  that  day 
nobody  else  has  been  able  to  discover  one, 
either. 

That  step  —  you  may  believe  we  took  it 
promptly  —  made  our  final  victory  as  sure  as 
a  mathematical  demonstration ;  made  escape 
from  our  net  a  matter  beyond  human  possi- 
bility. But  it  didn't  put  an  end  to  the  fight; 
rather  it  seemed  to  make  the  struggle  of  the 
man  in  the  net  only  the  more  desperate.  He 
had  the  alternative  of  selling  out  to  us  for  what 
price  we  might  choose  to  pay,  or  of  keeping  up 
his  present  tactics  until  there  was  nothing  left 
to  sell,  and  he  seemed  to  have  chosen  the 
latter  course. 

How  that  long  war  was  ended  at  last  is 
something  that  it  is  now  time  to  tell ;  it  was 
by  no  crushing  victory  of  ours  ;  I  doubt  if  any 
victory  could  have  done  it. 

I  think  you  will  agree  with  me  that  it  was 
Adele  Broughton  who  kindled  the  feud  between 
me  and  my  friend.  The  materials  for  the  fire, 
I  admit,  were  all  there,  were  none  of  her  gath- 
ering ;  but  she  put  the  torch  to  the  pile.  Well, 
it  was  Barget  who  quenched  it. 
294 


Roger   Drake 

If  you  have  understood  this  story  I  have 
been  telling,  if  you  have  credited  me  with 
frankness  and  honesty  in  the  telling  of  it,  you 
will  believe  me  when  I  say  that  I  took  small 
pleasure  in  watching  the  hopeless  struggle  my 
old  friend  and  enemy  was  keeping  up ;  that  I 
often  wished  that  if  we  must  go  on  fighting  it 
might  be  on  evener  terms ;  that  I  was  utterly 
sick  of  the  whole  wretched  affair. 

Barget  and  I  talked  about  it  a  good  deal, 
and  she  often  asked  me  if  I  could  see  no  way  of 
making  an  end  of  it.  We  had  once  sent  Cooper 
to  ask  Stanley  to  put  a  price  on  his  property 
and  come  to  terms  with  us,  and  when  I  remem- 
bered the  defiant  answer  our  envoy  had  brought 
back,  and  then  recalled  my  own  last  talk  with 
him,  the  absolute  finality  in  his  voice  when  he 
had  said  it  was  too  late  and  had  reiterated  his 
old  threat,  then  whatever  hope  of  a  peaceful 
settlement  Barget  had  started  in  my  head  al- 
ways faded  away,  and  I  would  make  her  the 
old  answer,  that  there  was  no  way  at  all. 

Meanwhile  the  years  were  treating  us  kindly. 
Our  two  daughters,  Barget  and  Dorothy,  arrived 
in  due  succession  after  young  Christian  Jansen, 
and  the  three  children  in  course  of  growing  up 
took  most  of  their  mother's  time  and  gave  her 
plenty  of  trouble,  as  healthy  children  do,  so  that 
295 


Roger  Drake 

without  a  single  friend  outside  her  family,  she 
would  hardly  have  had  a  chance  to  feel  lonely. 
But  there  were  friends,  as  I  said,  who  had  stood 
by  through  the  darkest  days,  and  there  were 
pleasant  acquaintances,  some  newcomers  and 
some  of  the  old  ones  who  came  back  to  us, 
after  a  little  embarrassment  and  hesitation, 
when  the  storm  had  blown  over.  Society  came 
back  promptly,  and  with  no  embarrassment 
whatever. 

I  think,  after  all,  that  society  is  pretty  just,  or 
if  that  is  too  good  a  word,  at  least  pretty  con- 
sistent. It  exists  on  an  assumption  of  moder- 
ate prosperity,  it  demands  payment  for  its 
pleasures  in  like  coin,  and  recognizing  its  limi- 
tations, knowing  that  it  cannot  honor  a  draft 
on  sympathy,  it  is  chary  of  having  such  a  draft 
made  upon  it.  You  cannot  blame  it  if  it 
scurries  for  shelter  when  it  sees  a  storm  coming, 
for  its  clothes  are  made  for  fine  weather.  So 
when  it  came  back  to  us  as  soon  as  the  sun  of 
good  fortune  shone  out  strong  again,  we  wel- 
comed it,  enjoyed  as  many  of  its  pleasures  as 
Barget's  babies  left  her  leisure  for,  and  indulged 
in  no  unpleasant  reminiscences. 

Adele  Stanley,  however,  did  not  remove  her 
boycott  when  it  became  inoperative.  She  was 
like  her  husband,  defiant,  unbending,  apparently 
296 


"  'I'M  SO   GLAD   FOR   HER,'    WAS  ALL   SHE  SAID." 


Roger  Drake 

determined  to  carry  the  fight  to  the  last  ditch. 
Their  hospitality  was  as  lavish  as  ever  to  those 
who  stood  by  her  in  ignoring  us ;  but  though 
she  continued  for  a  while  to  hold  a  good  many 
to  their  allegiance,  her  company  grew  smaller 
and  smaller,  and  toward  the  end  she  was  much 
alone,  and  the  big  house  was  nearly  always 
dark. 

Through  all  the  years  the  couple  had  been 
childless,  and  it  was  with  some  surprise  that  we 
heard  —  this  was  just  before  the  end  came  — 
that  a  son  had  been  born  to  them.  The  fact 
seemed  to  have  some  strong  significance  to 
Barget ;  she  recurred  to  it  several  times  during 
the  evening  after  she  had  told  me  the  news. 

Later  she  fell  silent  for  so  long  that  I  asked 
her  where  her  thoughts  were.  "  I'm  so  glad 
for  her,"  was  all  she  said. 

I  was  a  good  deal  puzzled  and  I  said  so. 
"  I  can  see  how  you  can  forgive  her,"  I  said, 
"  at  least  to  the  length  of  wishing  her  no  par- 
ticular harm,  even  though  you  know  she  would 
do  all  her  mischief  over  again  if  she  could,  to- 
morrow. But  to  be  'glad  for  her'  is  such  a 
different  thing." 

"  I  know  it,"  Barget  answered,  "  and  I  feel  a 
little  ashamed  about  it.  I  mean  because  I'm 
so  inconsistent.  I  don't  forgive  everybody  else 
Z97 


Roger   Drake 

who  hurts  me,  at  least  not  that  way.  But  I've 
been  sorry  for  her  right  along ;  sorrier  for  her 
than  for  him,  though  I  suppose  she's  more  to 
blame  than  he  is.  I  can't  explain  why  at  all,  un- 
less perhaps  it's  because  you  used  to  be  so  fond 
of  her —  but  in  a  way  I've  always  put  myself  in 
her  place.  I  don't  try  to ;  I  just  do.  I  was 
sorry  for  her  when  people  began  to  let  her 
alone,  and  to  talk  about  her  and  about  him, 
just  as  they  used  to  talk  about  us,  and  now  that 
she  has  a  baby  to  make  her  happier  and  —  and 
better,  just  as  my  baby  made  me,  I'm  glad  for 
her." 

The  child  was  but  a  puny  little  creature,  it 
seemed,  and  it  lived  only  about  a  fortnight.  I 
heard  of  its  death  in  the  afternoon  before  I  left 
my  office,  and  I  made  a  point  of  going  home  a 
little  earlier  than  usual,  for  I  guessed  what  effect 
the  news  would  have  on  Barget. 

I  knew  the  moment  I  saw  her  that  she  had 
heard  it.  She  was  giving  the  children  their 
supper  in  the  nursery,  and  she  was  laughing 
with  them  and  at  them  just  as  she  always  did, 
but  when  the  meal  was  over  and  it  was  time  to 
say  good  night,  she  hugged  them  all,  even 
Dorothy,  who  always  went  to  sleep  over  the 
table  and  who  protested  uneasily,  and  kissed 
them  with  a  kind  of  passionate  affection  un- 
298 


Roger   Drake 

usual  with  her,  until  it  seemed  as  though  she 
could  not  let  them  go,  and  I  knew  what  was  in 
her  mind.  She  had  gone  back  to  our  own  dark 
days,  when  a  son  had  been  given  her  to  com- 
fort her,  and  was  thinking  how  she  would  have 
felt  if  after  a  few  short  days  he  had  been  taken 
away  from  her. 

She  controlled  herself  as  long  as  we  sat  at 
dinner,  but  afterward,  when  we  were  alone  in 
the  library,  she  came  to  me,  and  putting  down 
her  head  on  my  shoulder,  sobbed  like  a  child. 
I  did  not  try  to  say  anything,  just  held  her 
quietly,  and  at  last,  with  a  long  tremulous  breath, 
she  sat  up  and  dried  her  eyes. 

"  There,"  she  said  at  last,  "  now  I'll  be  good 
again.  But "  —  she  went  on  quickly  —  "  there 
is  something  you  must  do  right  away.  Tell  me 
you  will  do  it.  You  must  stop  the  war.  It 
can't  go  on  after  —  after  this." 

But  I  had  to  shake  my  head.  "  If  stopping 
it  had  rested  with  me,  it  would  have  stopped 
long  ago.  But  it's  out  of  my  hands.  There's 
nothing  —  nothing  in  the  world  that  I  can  do 
that  wouldn't  make  it  worse." 

"  You  mustn't  say  that  —  "  she  began,  but  I 
interrupted  her. 

"  If  I  were  to  go  to  his  office  to-morrow  on 
such  an  errand,  he  would  turn  me  out  of  it. 
299 


Roger   Drake 

He  would  think  I  had  come  to  take  advan- 
tage of  his  grief,  —  to  put  the  screws  on  again, 
—  and  I  shouldn't  blame  him." 

"  Not  to-morrow,"  she  said.  "  I  didn't  mean 
that.  But  write  him  a  note  now  and  send  it  to 
him.  Tell  him  it  has  gone  on  too  long  and  it 
must  stop ;  it  mustn't  go  past  to-night." 

"  I  haven't  any  right  to  do  that  without 
talking  to  the  others." 

"  Talk  to  them  to-morrow.  They  will  agree 
to  anything  you  say ;  even  if  they  don't  want 
to,  you  can  make  them.  But  to-night  it's  just 
between  you  and  him." 

Half  unwillingly — for  a  methodical  business 
man  of  my  age  cannot  mix  emotion  and  busi- 
ness without  an  effort —  I  took  up  a  pen  and  a 
sheet  of  paper  and  made  a  start.  That  sheet 
was  crumpled  up  and  thrown  aside,  and  another 
and  another  after  it,  until  in  despair  I  asked 
Barget  to  dictate  it  to  me. 

The  note  began  without  address,  and  it  ended 
without  formality,  just  with  my  name,  and  it 
contained  barely  more  than  just  the  phrase  she 
had  used  in  urging  me  to  write  it,  that  the 
struggle  between  us  must  stop,  forever,  to- 
night. 

I  sealed  it  up  and  sent  my  man  with  it, — 
the  Stanleys  lived  only  a  block  away,  —  and 
300 


Roger  Drake 

then  we  waited  there  in  the  library,  Barget  and 
I,  for  the  outcome.  Now  that  it  was  despatched 
our  positions  were  reversed.  Barget  was  sitting 
in  a  big  chair,  all  her  accustomed  serenity  come 
back,  while  I  paced  the  room  in  an  excitement 
which  grew  greater  as  the  moments  crept  by. 
Neither  of  us  spoke,  until  at  the  end  of  half 
an  hour  I  stopped  in  my  walk.  "  He  won't 
come,"  I  said. 

We  heard  the  bell  ring  before  the  words  were 
out  of  mv  mouth. 

J 

"He  has  come,"  said  Barget,  confidently,  and 
she  came  over  to  where  I  stood  and  kissed  me 
and  left  the  room. 

A  moment  after  she  had  gone  out,  Stanley 
came  in. 

"  Are  you  willing  to  talk  business  with  me 
for  half  an  hour  ?  "  he  asked.  His  voice  was 
harsh  and  not  very  steady. 

"I'm  glad  you've  come,"  said  I.  "Sit 
down." 

He  looked  at  me  steadily  for  a  while,  and 
neither  of  us  spoke.  I  was  casting  about  for 
the  best  way  to  begin,  but  it  was  he  who  broke 
the  silence. 

"Time  was,  Drake,"  said  he,  "when  you 
looked,  and  felt  too,  I  guess,  an  older  man  than 
I.  But  I've  more  than  caught  up  with  you." 
301 


Roger  Drake 

He  made  another  pause,  and  then  went  on. 
"  That's  not  what  I  came  to  say,  however.  You 
wrote  me  that  this  fight  of  ours  must  stop. 
Well,  you  timed  that  pretty  close.  It  has  got 
to  stop  ;  I'm  at  the  end  of  my  rope.  I've  had 
enough.  You  can  make  whatever  conditions 
you  fancy.  I'm  not  likely  to  quibble  over  them 
to-night." 

His  voice  was  under  control  now.  It  had 
the  old  defiant  sneer  in  it,  that  stung  me  as  it 
never  had  stung  before.  For  a  moment  my 
anger  at  the  taunt  had  possession  of  me,  but  I 
mastered  it  and  answered  him  quietly. 

"  I  think  you  know  better  than  that,"  said 
I.  "I  think  you  know  why  I  wrote  the  note 
to-night.  I  said  our  war  must  stop,  and  I  said 
it  because  common  decency  won't  let  me  carry 
it  any  farther.  One  way  or  another  we  must 
make  an  end  of  it,  here  and  now." 

"There's  only  one  way,"  he  said.  "It's  too 
late  for  anything  else.  There  can't  be  peace 
between  us  while  we're  within  striking  distance. 
One  of  us  must  go,  and  I'm  the  one.  What 
property  I  have  here  is  worth  just  what  you 
choose  to  pay  for  it.  I'm  through." 

I  was  not  looking  at  him,  and  I  asked  him  a 
question,  something  about  the  condition  of  his 
property,  but  he  didn't  answer  me,  and  glanc- 
302 


Roger   Drake 

ing  at  him  I  saw  he  hadn't  heard.  His  thoughts 
were  somewhere  else,  and  as  I  was  preparing  to 
repeat  the  question,  he  began  talking,  more  to 
himself  than  to  me. 

"  I  didn't  mean  it  to  end  this  way.  I  thought 
to  go  on  until  I  had  taken  the  last  dollar  I 
could  scrape  and  had  made  it  do  all  the  damage 
it  could,  and  then  —  well,  I  never  really  thought 
beyond  that.  But  the  thing  was  taken  out  of 
my  hands,  and  when  I  got  your  note  I  knew 
you  were  right  —  I  knew  better  than  you  did. 
Adele  is  nearly  mad  —  she  is  delirious  now, 
thank  Heaven,  but  a  little  while  ago,  just  before 
your  note  came,  she  knew  what  she  was  saying, 
and  she  begged  me  to  take  her  away.  She  had 
a  child  before  this,  not  long  after  we  were  mar- 
ried, but  it  was  born  dead,  and  after  that  she 
never  wanted  to  have  another.  But  lately,  she's 
thought  differently  about  it,  and  she's  been  hap- 
pier in  expecting  this  one  than  I've  known  her 
to  be  in  years.  I  didn't  realize  what  it  all 
meant  to  her  until  to-day.  I  rather  think  I've 
lost  them  both.  I  think  she'll  follow  her  baby, 
but  perhaps  —  " 

He  pulled  himself  up  with  a  start,  and    a 

deep  flush  sprang  into  his  face.     Then  slowly 

his  old  scornful  smile  came  back.     "  I  don't 

know  why  I've  been  favoring  you  with  this.  You 

303 


Roger   Drake 

may  have  enjoyed  it.  But  I  won't  detain  you 
any  longer.  The  price  is  just  what  you  say  it 
shall  be.  Name  it,  and  let's  be  done." 

"  I  can't  do  that,"  said  I,  "  until  I  know 
what  your  property  is  worth." 

"  What  has  that  to  do  with  it  ?  "  he  demanded 
fiercely.  "  You  can  be  as  far  on  the  safe  side 
as  you  like." 

I  wanted  to  end  our  talk  as  badly  as  he  did, 
yet  I  could  not  for  a  while  hit  upon  a  way  to 
conclude  a  bargain.  But  I  got  it  presently. 

"  I  say  again,"  said  I,  "  that  you  know  better 
than  you  say.  You  know  I  did  not  ask  for 
terms  so  that  I  could  get  an  advantage  over 
you.  I  want  to  be  fair.  Here's  my  suggestion. 
Have  any  competent  engineer  —  your  own 
chief  engineer  at  the  Croesus  —  make  me  a 
report  on  the  value  of  the  property.  What- 
ever he  says  it's  worth,  less  incumbrances,  I'll 
pay.  And  do  the  same  with  your  smelter." 

He  said  nothing,  and  when  I  glanced  at  him 
for  a  reply,  I  saw  that  his  mouth  was  twitching. 

"  One  other  thing,"  I  went  on.  "  All  that 
may  take  some  time.  If  you  are  in  a  hurry 
to  take  Mrs.  Stanley  away,  and  an  advance 
would  —  " 

He  interrupted  me  there.     "  We  shan't  have 
to  call  on  your  charity,"  he  said  sharply. 
3°4 


Roger   Drake 

"  But  you  assent  to  the  rest  of  what  I  said  ? 
Shall  we  call  it  ended  ? " 

For  a  second  time  he  seemed  not  to  hear  my 
question.  "We've  fought  it  out,  and  you've 
beaten  me,  and  now  it's  done  I'm  glad  of  it. 
I've  seen  this  fight  and  this  result  ever  since 
that  night  when  we  both  came  back  from  the 
West,  and  you  an  hour  ahead  of  me  ;  ever  since 
I  saw  her  standing  there  in  her  gray  dress,  and 
you  looking  at  her.  I  knew  then  we  must 
fight  it  out,  and  that  in  the  end  you  must 
beat  me.  Yes,  we'll  call  it  ended." 

He  rose  from  his  chair  unsteadily,  and  when 
we  were  on  our  feet  facing  each  other,  an  im- 
pulse that  I  can't  name,  not  friendship,  for  that 
had  died  years  ago,  but  the  ghost  of  it,  perhaps, 
made  me  hold  out  my  hand  to  him. 

He  shook  his  head  wearily,  and  said  just 
what  he  had  said  when  we  talked  once  before, 
"  It's  too  late  for  that,  Drake." 

So  here  I  make  an  end  of  my  story,  the  story 
that  I  wanted  to  tell  myself.  The  long  struggle 
did  not  end  without  leaving  its  scar  on  me.  I 
used  to  have  a  dream — for  it  was  that  more  than 
it  was  a  hope  —  that  when  the  fighting  was  done 
I  could  order  my  life  differently,  and  could  give 
its  last  years  a  better  significance.  I  wanted  to 
3°5 


Roger   Drake 

live  as  Father  Jansen  had  lived,  and  instead  of 
making  war,  to  go  about  trying  to  heal  the  hurts 
of  the  world  as  he  did.  But  somehow  the  web 
is  woven  too  tightly  about  me  to  be  broken  ;  I 
can  give  my  money,  to  be  sure,  but  it  must  be 
at  the  bidding  of  others,  for  my  eyes  don't  see 
things  clearly. 

My  son  is  growing  up  like  his  grandfather, 
high  and  generous  in  spirit,  impatient,  not  only 
of  overt  wrong  and  oppression,  but  of  all  that 
has  no  better  excuse  than  expediency.  I  am 
glad  that  this  is  so,  but  there  is  a  sting  in  it  for 
me,  too ;  for  lately  I  have  felt  that  his  uncon- 
taminated  young  ideals  are  uncomfortable  in 
company  with  many  of  the  grim  realities  which 
my  life  means  to  him.  He  will  understand 
better,  I  think,  when  he  has  faced  some  of  the 
realities  for  himself,  and  when  that  time  comes, 
if  I  am  not  here  to  tell  it  to  him,  he  shall  read 
this  story  of  mine,  and  I  think  it  will  make  his 
father's  memory  a  sweeter  one. 

Barget  has  bee'n  reading  it  as  it  was  written. 
She  is  behind  my  chair  now,  and  her  hands  are 
clasped  over  my  forehead.  She  understands. 


306 


CALUMET   "K" 

BY 

MERWIN-WEBSTER 

Authors  of  "The  Short  Line  War,"  etc. 

With  Illustrations  by  HARRY  C.  EDWARDS 
Cloth.        i2mo.        $1.50 


"A  novel,  with  several  elements  of  rather  unusual  interest.  As 
a  tale,  it  is  swift,  simple,  and  absorbing,  and  one  does  not  willingly 
put  it  down  until  it  is  finished.  It  has  to  do  with  grain-elevator 
business,  with  railways,  strikes,  and  commercial  and  financial  mat- 
ters generally,  woven  skilfully  into  a  human  story  of  love." 

—  The  Commercial  Advertiser,  New  York. 

"  The  whole  commercial  world  of  the  United  States  has,  for  some 
months  back,  been  metaphorically  removing  its  hat  in  deference  to 
the  much-lauded  individual  who  carried  some  message  or  other  to 
the  famous  gentleman  bearing  the  name  of  a  well-known  brand  of 
cigars.  The  carrier  of  the  message  can  now,  in  the  enlightened 
parlance  of  the  vaudeville,  '  go  way  back  and  sit  down,'  for  in 
Charlie  Bannon  we  have  one  who  would  carry  a  message  to  Garcia 
with  the  same  indifference  and  success  as  a  messenger  boy  would 
carry  flowers  to  one's  best  girl,  and  be  no  more  appalled  by  the 
magnitude  of  the  task." —  The  Philadelphia  Telegraph, 

" '  Calumet  "  K  " '  is  a  novel  that  is  exciting  and  absorbing,  but  not 
the  least  bit  sensational.  It  is  the  story  of  a  rush.  .  .  .  The  book 
is  an  unusually  good  story;  one  that  shows  the  inner  workings  of 
the  labor  union,  and  portrays  men  who  are  the  bone  and  sinew  of 
the  earth."—  The  Toledo  Blade. 

"The  heroine  in  this  case  is  the  hero's  stenographer;  but  the 
action  of  the  story  grows  out  of  the  attempt  of  rival  capitalists  and 
grain  men  to  balk  the  building  of  a  grain  elevator  by  a  set  date." 

—  The  Burlington  Free  Press. 


THE   MACMILLAN   COMPANY 

66  FIFTH  AVENUE,  NEW  YORK 

I 


THE  BANKER  AND  THE  BEAR 

A  STORY  OF  A  CORNER  IN  LARD 

By  HENRY  KITCHELL  WEBSTER 

One  of  the  Authors  of  "The  Short-Line  War" 


i6mo.    Cloth.    $1.50 


"There  is  a  love  affair  of  real  charm  and  most  novel  surroundings; 
there  is  a  run  on  the  bank  which  is  almost  worth  a  year's  growth,  and  there 
is  a  spy  and  a  villain  and  all  manner  of  exhilarating  men  and  deeds,  which 
should  bring  the  book  into  high  favor."  —  Chicago  Evening  Post. 

"  An  exciting  and  absorbing  story." 

—  New  York  Times'  Saturday  Review. 

"  A  most  fascinating  book."  —  Times-Herald,  Chicago. 

"  But  after  the  glamour  of  events  has  worn  away  ...  its  real  literary 
merit  will  assert  itself."  —  Chicago  Tribune. 

"  Mr.  Webster  has  worked  out  a  clever  and  interesting  story,  which,  in 
a  measure,  is  real,  for  the  events  he  describes  have  all  happened,  and 
doubtless  will  frequently  happen  again  in  a  like  combination.  The  tale 
is  not  entirely  one  of  finance,  for  there  is  a  feminine  interest  as  well,  and 
a  dainty  little  love  romance,  which  is  brought  to  a  happy  conclusion." 

—  Toledo  Blade. 

"  Mr.  Webster  tells  a  plain  story  in  plain  words,  adducing  no  adventi- 
tious aids ;  it  is  a  good  story,  well  told  and  worth  reading,  but  without  frills. 
This  is  one  of  the  few  novels  of  the  year  which  every  man  with  blood  in  his 
veins  will  enjoy.  It  will  prove  an  unfailing  resource  in  the  event  of  a  rainy 
day  at  the  seashore  or  the  mountains.  Through  it  all  runs  a  delightful  love 
story."  —  Boston  Herald. 

THE   MACMILLAN   COMPANY 

66  FIFTH  AVENUE,  NEW  YORK 


THE  SHORT  LINE  WAR 


BY 

MERWIN-WEBSTER 
Cloth,     izmo.    $1.50 


"A  thrilling  tale  of  modern  heroism  and  chivalry,  and  the 
story  of  a  romance  of  an  unusually  stirring  and  admirable 
quality."  —  Boston  Courier. 

"There  is  a  fascinating  love  story  woven  through  the 
details  of  the  plotting  and  counter-plotting  of  the  warring 
railroad  interests." —  Chicago  Daily  News. 

"  A  rattling  good  railroad  story." 

—  Evening  Telegraph,  Philadelphia. 

"  Breezy,  up-to-date ;  ...  the  best  of  its  kind." 

—  Springfield  Republican. 

"  One  of  the  most  readable  of  this  season's  summer  novels." 

—  Commercial  Advertiser. 

"A  capital  story  of  adventure  in  the  field  of  railroading." 

—  Outlook. 


THE   MACMILLAN   COMPANY 

66  FIFTH  AVENUE,  NEW  YORK 

2 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 

Los  Angeles 
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